Biography
Debbie Hands was a member of the Lexington, Kentucky lesbian-feminist and gay-liberation collective subpoenaed in 1975 by a federal grand jury that was ostensibly hunting the antiwar fugitives Susan Saxe and Katherine Power, but which activists said was being used to map the local radical and gay community. Hands refused to cooperate and was jailed for civil contempt on March 8, 1975 as one of the six subpoenaed activists who became known as the Lexington Six. She was released six days later, on March 14, 1975, after agreeing to testify; of the six, only Jill Raymond held out for the full grand jury term of about fourteen months.
Contact’s May 7, 1975 report individually names Debbie Hands, aged 22, among the six Lexington grand jury witnesses jailed without bond for contempt after refusing to answer questions in the FBI investigation of Susan Saxe and Katherine Power. Attorneys Robert Sedler and Judith Peterson accused the Justice Department of using the grand jury to compel answers that witnesses could legally decline to give FBI agents. That criticism is attributed to the lawyers. The report supplies no exact jail-entry or physical-release day and does not establish an additional custody episode. Source: https://www.houstonlgbthistory.org/Houston80s/Voice/Contact/contact_19750507.pdf#page=11
