Victim’s fury as rapist who wants sex change moves to women’s jail

A DOUBLE rapist who is having a £10,000 sexchange operation on the NHS while behind bars has now been moved to a women’s prison.

Jessica Winfield, formerly known as Martin Ponting, was jailed for life in 1995 for raping two girls under the age of 16.

She was sent to maximum security Frankland prison in County Durham, which holds some of the most dangerous sex offenders and murderers.

The rapist, who has three children, was then moved to Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire, another top security jail, where she complained of being victimised by staff and inmates.

After being granted a genderrecognition certificate by a doctor, which is needed for an acquired gender to be legally recognised, Winfield was moved to the Bronzefield prison in Surrey – Europe’s largest women-only jail with 527 inmates.

Sources said Winfield, 50, has started hormone treatment but has not yet undergone the full transition. She is due to be released this year.

One of Winfield’s victims yesterday described the decision to move the rapist to a women’s prison as ‘a kick in the teeth’. She added: ‘There are not enough words to describe him and the evil he has done.

‘It is diabolical they have allowed him to have a sex change. This is not going to take away the urge to do horrific things to children.

‘It mocks the people he offended against.

‘To assume the identity of a woman after what he did is a kick in the teeth.’

The woman visited her abuser five years ago in an attempt to get a form of closure, but she was shocked to see the rapist dressed as a woman. ‘I had no idea what was going on. He was sat there wearing a wig and make-up. He had boobs,’ she told The Sun.

Until recently, convicts had to be placed in prisons according to their legal gender. But after the deaths of two transgender women held in male prisons in 2015, ministers launched a review of the care of prisoners who have not had a sex change.

Following the study, published in November, the Ministry of Justice eased the rules so some transgender men could be sent to women’s jails and vice versa.

In 2007, Winfield wrote to a prisoners’ newspaper to ask when anti- discrimination rules would be changed to protect transsexuals.

In the letter to Inside Time, she wrote: ‘ Unfortunately there is a minority of staff and inmates that give me a hard time because of my sexuality.

‘I have changed my name to that of a female to prove to the authorities that I am very serious about my gender and that I do not feel right being a man.’

‘Wearing a wig and make-up’