MONTREAL -- A two-spirit inmate at a Quebec prison claims they weren't sent to hospital for eight days after their arm was allegedly broken by a correctional officer in May.
Nick DiNardo, who identifies with the pronouns "they" and "them," says they have faced years of alleged mistreatment and abuse at correctional facilities. Last summer, they filed a human rights complaint against the Correctional Service of Canada for failing to provide them with mental health treatment and for using excessive force.
In the latest incident, DiNardo alleges correctional officers at the maximum security Port Cartier prison pushed them to the ground and broke their arm while on their way back to their cell on May 30.
"Five or six COs pushed them to the ground and held them down while one CO put his knee on Nick’s neck and then twisted their arm up around their back and broke it," DiNardo’s partner, Erin Gear, said in an interview.
"They heard a snapping sound when it happened."
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples condemned the attack in a statement released last week and said DiNardo didn’t go to a hospital until June 7. Then on July 12, while returning to their cell from an x-ray to assess their condition, another correctional officer allegedly injured the same arm again.
In a statement to CTV News, the Correctional Service of Canada said a disciplinary investigation is ongoing regarding the alleged incident, but declined to provide specific details due to privacy reasons.
DiNardo, whose mother is a residential school survivor, is a member of the Piapot First Nation and has faced alleged abuse both inside and outside the prison system. They’ve been transferred from institution to institution over the years and their partner says they are not getting the help they need at Port Cartier, approximately 600 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.
Gear said she wasn’t surprised to hear what happened to her partner, who she says has been beaten up and maced by guards "multiple times."
"They’ve had guards call them ‘tranny’ and ‘f*****’ and just a billion other things, so it wasn’t really surprising to anyone," she said.
"If Nick had done this, you know, they would get years added onto their sentence and these COs are just getting away like nothing happened."
Nick DiNardo filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2020 outlining a history of alleged abuse from correctional officers, suicide attempts, lack of adequate mental health treatment in custody, and being locked up in a solitary confinement cell for months at a time. (Photo courtesy Erin Gear)
In a video call with their partner obtained by CTV, DiNardo told Gear they feel like they’re in "gender segregation."
"I can’t go anywhere. They don’t even know what I am. They’re labelling what I am, being two-spirit, as a mental illness," DiNardo says in the video.
Two-spirit refers to people in Indigenous cultures with male and female spirits, an identity they say is not respected in prison. DiNardo has been incarcerated since November 2018 and is serving a five-year sentence for aggravated assault.
On July 27, 2020, they filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission outlining a history of alleged abuse from correctional officers, suicide attempts, lack of adequate mental health treatment in custody, and being locked up in a solitary confinement cell for months at a time.
"I have swallowed glass and razor blades, climbed the razor wire, tried to hang myself, refused blood transfusions and gone on hunger strikes to try to kill myself. I've been placed in Pinel restraints several times," DiNardo wrote in the complaint.
"I'm not aware of ever having a full psychiatric assessment in CSC custody, even though the psychiatrist has questioned some of my historical diagnoses."
Canada’s correctional service told CTV it takes these allegations "very seriously" and that employees are expected to act according to legal and ethical standards.
"CSC staff and senior management strive to ensure that our work to rehabilitate offenders is done safely and with the utmost professionalism. Our priority is to protect the physical and mental health and overall safety of those who live and work within federal correctional institutions," wrote CSC spokesperson Jean-François Mathieu.
The CSC didn’t respond to questions from CTV about now-deleted tweets from someone identifying themselves as a correctional officer who knows DiNardo and said “there’s no choice but to cause injury to him to control him.”
The Twitter account, which has since been deleted, also referred to DiNardo as "deranged."
Nicole Kief, a legal advocate who represented DiNardo in their human rights complaint, said DiNardo, as a two-spirit person, is especially vulnerable to harassment and sexualized violence in an institution designed for men and said they would be much safer in a women’s institution.
"Even under CSC's policy and under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Nick should be able to be placed in an institution that accords with their gender, and that is safe. But their requests to transfer to an institution for women have been denied," Kief said.
"Nick really needs a place where they can live that is safe, where they don't have to live in constant fear for their own personal safety, where they can live with dignity."
With files from CTV Montreal's Iman Kassam
