Transgender killer’s sex change on NHS
Fury over £60k op to ‘improve torturer’s wellbeing’
A TRANSGENDER prisoner serving a life sentence for a sadistic murder is having gender reassignment surgery on the NHS.
Paris Green, 27, will be escorted on a 1,000-mile round-trip from jail in Scotland to hospital in Brighton for an operation that will cost taxpayers up to £60,000.
Green – born Peter Laing – was jailed in 2013 for sexually assaulting and torturing a man before battering him to death.
The killer has identified as a woman since 2011 but has twice been removed from women’s prison wings after having sex with female inmates.
Green, who is in a women’s wing at Edinburgh Prison, is scheduled to have the gender reassignment operation within weeks. The reason is to help improve the killer’s ‘physical and mental wellbeing’.
The family of Green’s victim Robert Shankland, 45, are furious at the prison service for ‘jumping through hoops’ to fulfil the killer’s human rights, claiming Green forfeited these by committing murder.
Prison guards have warned the
Victim: Robert Shankland surgery and two-week recovery will be a ‘security nightmare’ as Green is a maximum- security prisoner and considered an escape risk.
Guards will keep a 24-hour watch at the Nuffield private hospital in Brighton. The security operation alone is expected to cost taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds.
One experienced prison officer said: ‘Most of the people I’ve discussed this matter with think it’s outrageous.
‘You can murder someone brutally but while you are in prison you are entitled to everything you ask for, no matter the burden on a stretched system, because it might breach your human rights to say no. What about the rights of the victim and his family?’
Another said: ‘Has anyone asked the nursing staff who will look after her if they are happy to care for a murderer?’
Green was ordered to serve a minimum of 18 years in jail for murdering Mr Shankland in Fife, Scotland. Earlier this year, Mr Shankland’s sister Pauline Bell, 46, said: ‘What she did was awful. She should not be getting the operation on the NHS. It’s not lifesaving treatment.
‘She took somebody’s life away and destroyed a family. She destroyed my mum’s life and now she is being given this treatment so she can feel better?
‘The prison service says it’s about human rights but she took away someone’s human rights in the worst possible way.’
Green was in Cornton Vale women’s jail but was moved after reports that she was having sex with female prisoners in her cell.
The surgery will be performed in Brighton because Scottish hospitals lack the resources to carry out gender reassignment operations.
The case comes amid controversy over the rights of transgender prisoners. Prison authorities have been forced to issue new rules following a rapid rise in the number of transgender inmates and concern about their treatment.
Last month Karen White, a transgender rapist, was jailed for life after sexually assaulting two inmates in a women’s jail.