Trans inmates’ 7 sex attacks on women in jails
TRANSGENDER prisoners have carried out seven sex attacks on women in jail.
Official figures show for the first time the scale of offending by criminals who were born male but allowed to move to female jails after changing gender.
Yet despite the risks, prison governors are still allowing trans inmates to move into the jails.
Male-born trans prisoners were first allowed to request a transfer to women’s jails in England and Wales in 2016. Just a year later, the risks of the policy were made clear when a convicted rapist was moved to women’s jail HMP New Hall and sexually assaulted two women inmates.
Karen White dressed as a woman but was still legally a man and had not undergone surgery. She was jailed for life in 2018 by a judge who called her a ‘highly manipulative’ predator. Now the Ministry of Justice has admitted the case was not a one-off. In response to a Parliamentary question from former Labour Party General Secretary Baroness McDonagh, Ministers revealed there have been several other sexual assaults by trans prisoners. But incredibly, the initial response omitted the White case and was corrected only after The Mail on Sunday intervened.
The MoJ said: ‘Since 2010, out of the 124 sexual assaults that occurred in the female estate a total of seven of those were sexual assaults against females in custody perpetrated by transgender individuals.’
It means that although trans women make up about 1 per cent of the 3,600 female jail population, they are to blame for 5.6 per cent of sexual assaults there.
The MoJ said it did not know if the culprits were punished, saying this information was ‘not held centrally’. It also said there had been ‘no reported incidents of any type of sexual assault against prison officers by trans prisoners’, despite claims to the contrary.
As reported last month, ex-Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said in a recent interview there had been ‘situations of male prisoners selfidentifying as females then raping staff in prison’.
After the White case, a policy was developed for considering trans prisoners’ transfer requests, adding ‘specific risk factors that must be considered where they might impact on other prisoners’.
Yet figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show increasing numbers of trans prisoners are being allowed to move to women’s jails. In 2018, seven requests were made and fewer than five were granted. Yet last year 14 requests were made and, of those, seven were granted.