This past May, Sierra Johnson—a Native American woman who sued the state of New York in 2023 alleging she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by prison staff while held in two different upstate prisons—phoned me from her hospital bed in Burlington, Vermont.
Johnson, 36, had been diagnosed with end-stage heart failure and was recovering from a two-week stay in intensive care after a heart attack. Her voice shook and cracked over the line as she told me her story, saying she wanted to speak up for the roughly 1,600 women who sued the state in 2023 under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging they were sexually assaulted in state prisons.
Johnson, a resident of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, periodically apologized for her anxiety or emotions. When I asked if she wanted to stop or take a break, she refused. "This is something that is empowering me to continue to live," she said.
"It goes beyond just my own little life," she added. "I want to be able to completely and fully represent not only myself, but also the people who I was incarcerated with. My heart goes out to them every single day, knowing that [the sexual abuse] hasn't stopped."
A few weeks later, we published Johnson's story as part of an ongoing investigative series supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, reported in partnership with New York Focus. "What I want from this is that, no matter what, we are treated as human beings and given the right to safety, the right to exist," Johnson told me.