in general population. Even in protective custody, John was not immune from sexual advances. While putting away chairs after church services one day, a black prisoner in his early 30s tried to kiss him and grab his rear. John did not fight back; he later said he’d wanted to avoid a misconduct ticket that might jeopardize his parole. So when the officer encountered the two prisoners, he noted that he’d seen them “kissing each other with an open mouth and inappropriately touching each other on the buttocks.” The misconduct ticket was dropped when John explained why he had not fought back. John was offered more protection deals, and he eventually agreed to kiss a white prisoner in his early 20s. When they were caught in the law library,of character.” He said he collected written statements from other prisoners, arguing that such a false claim would brand him as homosexual and put him at risk of attack. The prison officials did not find his appeal persuasive; their notes claim that John provided “neither evidence nor information that substantiates his allegations.” His grievance was denied.

It was around this time that John received a letter from an attorney named Deborah LaBelle. Working with a small staff out of an office in downtown Ann Arbor, LaBelle had been suing the Michigan Department of Corrections since the mid-1980s. In 2009, she had won $100 million in a class-action suit for female prisoners who had been sexually assaulted by male guards (among them John’s mother when she’d served time for lighting