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Woman Showered, Underwent Cavity Search

POSTED: 3:28 pm EDT July 20, 2007
UPDATED: 3:29 pm EDT July 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A D.C. jail made a mistake when a woman was booked in as a man. She lived, showered and slept in the central cellblock in downtown D.C. with men for two days before the mistake was corrected.

The gender mix-up was discovered Monday when the 47-year-old woman was transferred from the U.S. Marshal Service's central cellblock to the D.C. Jail.

She was processed, photographed, fingerprinted and subjected to a body cavity search as part of the male prison population at the jail. This was when she was found to be a woman.

Authorities said the Dominican-born woman was identified in documents as Virginia Grace, also known as Virginia Soto. They said Grace tried repeatedly to tell officers that she was not a man.

A female officer took her to be examined by a doctor in the infirmary. The doctor realized the mistake.

Grace was then put with the female inmates.

A representative for the D.C. Department of Corrections released a statement.

"(The) incident is under active investigation," the statement said. "However, in all of her criminal justice processing up to the point of DOC custody in this case, she was addressed as a male. Procedures used by Marshals treated and transported the individual as a male."

A D.C. bench warrant was issued in May after Grace failed to show up for a prostitution charge. The warrant listed her as a man.

However, in documents from her July 14 arrest for allegedly smoking crack behind a building on Northwest 14th Street, the arresting officers printed clearly that she was a woman.

One man who lived with Grace for multiple years described her as having very masculine features. He said many people assumed she was a man wearing women's clothes.