‘Transgender’ rapists’ sex attacks in a woman’s jail
Convict ‘used transitioning to find victims’
A RAPIST who used a “transgender persona” to get sent to a women’s prison, where she sexually assaulted two inmates, has been jailed for life.
Karen White, 52, was yesterday also jailed for separate counts of raping two women and stabbing a neighbour. She has since been moved to a men’s facility.
White, who was born male and now identifies as a woman, sexually assaulted the two prisoners while on remand in a women’s jail for the knifing.
At the time, she was a convicted child sex offender but police did know about the rapes.
White, described in court as “predatory” and “dangerous”, was born Stephen Wood but she began gender re-alignment, wearing a wig and false breasts.
She had past convictions for indecent exposure and gross indecency involving children, and animal cruelty and dishonesty when she was arrested in August 2017 for knifing her neighbour, aged 66, in Mytholmroyd, West Yorks. While on remand for the stabbing in HMP New Hall, West Yorks, she sexually assaulted two inmates, on September 13 and October 4, 2017. Prosecutor Christopher Dunn told Leeds crown court yesterday: “She is allegedly a transgender female. “There’s smatterings of evidence in this case that the defendant’s approach to transitioning has been less than committed. The prosecution AS WOMAN White suggest the reason for [this] is so the defendant can use a transgender persona to put herself in contact with vulnerable persons she can then abuse.”
At the time of her arrest in 2017, some of White’s previous offences were known. In 1989, then known as David Thompson, she indecently exposed himself to a boy aged nine. In 2001, she sexually assaulted and committed gross indecency on a boy aged 12.
However, police did not know that she had raped a pregnant woman in 2003
HMP New Hall Karen White, formerly known as Stephen Wood
after spiking her drink, and in 2016 raped a woman aged 23 multiple times.
The offences came to light when she was on remand in HMP New Hall.
White was yesterday jailed for two sexual assaults, wounding in relation to the stabbing, and three counts of rape against two women.
Sentencing her, judge Christopher Batty said: “You are predatory and highly manipulative, and dangerous.
“You represent a significant risk of serious harm to children, to women and the general public.”
White must serve a minimum of eight years and 116 days before she can be considered for parole, and will remain on licence for life if released. She is now housed at HMP Leeds men’s jail.
Currently, criminals are sent to prison based on their legal gender, determined by a birth certificate or a gender recognition certificate. White did not have a female gender recognition certificate.
A HM Prison Service spokesman said: “We apologise sincerely for the mistakes which were made in this case.”