NAT’L COMMISSION TO HEAR FROM PRISON RAPE SURVIVORS:

As a young, bisexual inmate weighing just 123 pounds, Kendell Spruce made a perfect target for sexual predators.

Nine months after landing in an Arkansas prison for violating parole for check forgery, he said he had been raped by 27 fellow prisoners, including a cellmate who infected him with HIV.

Spruce, now 42 and living in Flint, Mich., planned to tell his story Friday to a congressional commission studying prison rape and sexual abuse. Other witnesses will include juveniles attacked in adult prisons and transgender men and women.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission was created by Congress and was given about a year to prepare a report on the problem and propose national standards governing the prevention, investigation and punishment of abuse.

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