How double rapist became the first to swap his male cell for a female one
IT WASN’T hard to spot the transgender inmate. At Bronzefield Prison in Surrey, a women-only jail run by the French firm Sodexo, Jessica Winfield was sporting stubble. Tall, broad and muscular, says a recent visitor to the prison, she was wearing a ‘big flowery dress’, make-up and a long blonde wig. But in every other way, ‘she came across as a man’.
Worryingly, a second visitor says the other prisoners, who were, of course, women, ‘seemed scared of her’, adding: ‘We were in a communal area, and everyone else was mingling and chatting, but they were leaving her well alone.’
Their unease had an obvious reason. Jessica Winfield had been a man called Martin Ponting, and was convicted and sentenced to life for brutally raping two females – one an underage child, the other the disabled daughter of a family friend. His crimes must have been exceptionally serious: he was sentenced in 1995, and it is highly unusual for anyone to spend 23 years in prison for rape.
Moreover, before moving to Bronzefield in 2016, Winfield was held at Whitemoor, a Category A, high-security prison reserved for the most dangerous male inmates. A male visitor who encountered Winfield at Bronzefield says: ‘I felt her presence in a women’s prison was itself an act of aggression, a way of exercising power and domination. To me, the other inmates seemed terrified.’
Ten years before moving to Bronzefield, Winfield was already identifying as a woman, telling a prison newspaper she was having ‘a hard time because of my sexuality’. Reportedly, she has had surgery, though it is not clear how extensive this has been: only 20 per cent of born-male transsexuals have either hormone or surgical treatment, of which only a small minority will have their male genitals removed.
But even those who do can pose problems. Prison Governors Association president Andrea Albutt said: ‘In one prison we had a transgender prisoner who had gone through the full process. Sometimes she was very feminine. At other times, she was aggressive, masculine, very destabilising; very macho, and she had to be put in segregation.’
Freedom of Information disclosures confirm that men’s prisons contain dozens of transgender inmates convicted for violent and sexual offences committed when they were men – among them Davina Ayrton, jailed for eight years in 2016 for raping a girl of 15 in 2004 when called David.
The Transcrimeuk website says that in 2016, 12 born-male transsexuals were convicted of sexual crimes against children, seven of sex attacks on adults, as well as one murder and one attempted murder.
Some were convicted after identifying as women, such as Paul Banfield, found guilty of sexually assaulting a girl of 17 in Shrewsbury and breaching a subsequent restraining order, and Alice Smith, who downloaded child pornography.
Craig Hauxwell was jailed for 14 years for raping two teenage girls and seven indecent assaults. He committed his crimes 2001 and 2002 in County Durham, but by the time of his 2016 trial, was identifying as a woman called Lisa. After his conviction he went on the run but was later apprehended.
Ross Florida was jailed in Somerset in 2007 for raping two boys and a girl. He changed gender in prison, but after release was convicted as Nicola Florida in 2016 of breaching a protection order when she tried to get photographs of one of her victims developed.
‘Her very presence was an act of aggression’