Keiana Aldrich has struggled to keep herself alive inside the California Institution for Women for months, anxious about the coronavirus, scared of retaliation for reporting alleged sexual abuse and fighting the urge to kill herself.

“Being locked in a room 24 hours a day except to shower sucks,” Aldrich wrote in an August email from the Riverside County prison. She has too much time to think, she said, “and it makes me go crazy.”

Last week, after being cut off from communication with the outside world for weeks, Aldrich, 25, reportedly slashed her wrists and neck with razor blades, then swallowed two of them, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. State authorities declined to give specifics about Aldrich, citing medical privacy laws.

Though Aldrich did not die, those closest to her say the attempt on her own life, and the scant information they are able to glean from prison authorities, is another breakdown in a system that has continually failed Aldrich, first sexually abused at age 4, then imprisoned at age 17 for a crime related to her being trafficked for sex.

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