When Estefanie Ferraz went to prison, she had been living as a woman for about a decade, had undergone more than half a dozen plastic surgeries that included breast and cheek implants to enhance her feminine looks, and was saving up for a sex change operation.

But her identification card said she was a man.

The transgender 29-year-old was sent to a prison for men in Rio de Janeiro where, she says, she was stripped of her female name and shorn of her long locks and dignity.