I should never have been put in women’s jail
... says trans rapist who went on to sexually assault female prisoners
A NOTORIOUS transgender sex predator who sexually assaulted female prisoners now says she should never have been put in a women’s jail.
Convicted paedophile and rapist Karen White, who was born a man, molested female inmates in a threemonth reign of terror at New Hall women’s prison in West Yorkshire. England.
White, 57, who still has male genitalia, was moved to a men’s prison and later received a life sentence for a series of sex crimes.
Now, in a four-page letter to a women’s rights campaigner, sent from her cell at Frankland prison in Durham, 6ft tall White urges the British government to keep transgender women out of female jails unless they have had surgery.
White says ‘all I could see was fear in the faces’ of female inmates when they arrived at New Hall jail five years ago. ‘They would have seen me as a man in woman’s clothing and a threat to them,’ writes White, who has been described as a ‘towering figure in a blonde wig’.
She says ‘transgender women should not be in a women’s prison’, adding: ‘I mean all transgender women, not case by case, until they have had full reassignment surgery because it’s all about the women in the women’s prison and their safety should be paramount.
‘Housing transgender women who have not had full surgery only continues to put these vulnerable women at risk daily and know-one (sic) should be made to feel that way in their safe environment.’
White, born Stephen Wood, is serving life at high-security Frankland jail for multiple rapes, sex attacks and grevious bodily harm.
The women’s rights activist who received the letter said: ‘It came as a bolt out of the blue. Feminists have been warning for years that female-only spaces should be protected for the sake of women’s safety and now this letter shows that even trans women agree.’
In the letter, White says she told officials when she was remanded in 2017 that she should not be placed in a women’s prison. She claims a magistrate told her she would be detained in a female jail as she had been living as a woman in ‘the community’ for two years.
White will serve a minimum nineand-a-half years before being considered for parole after admitting sex attacks on two female prisoners and raping two other women.
The judge at Leeds Crown Court called White ‘predatory and highly manipulative’. She attacked the two women inmates at New Hall while on remand after stabbing her 66year-old neighbour with a knife. One of the prisoners who accused White, Cheryle Kempton, later told The Mail on Sunday how White demanded she commit a sex act, grabbed her breasts and pressed up against her while aroused.
White’s letter fuels the debate on whether men who identify as women should have unfettered access to female-only spaces.
This year Britain introduced regulations banning trans women with male genitalia who are violent or sexual offenders from serving time in female prisons. Exemptions can only be made in exceptional cases.
Last night Liz Hogarth, a former official at the UK’s ministry of justice, said there must be no reversal of the policy on trans prisoners.
She said: ‘Most of the women are extremely vulnerable having experienced multiple and complex trauma, including male violence. It is never appropriate to prioritise the needs of trans-identifying males above the needs of these women.’
There are just two transgender inmates in Irish prisons and Ireland has no official policy on trans prisoners. However, some guidelines centred on ‘dignity and respect’ have been introduced in recent years.
I was sexually assaulted by a transgender rapist – in a women’s jail