The scandal of men in women's prisons

Why is anyone surprised when these bastards rape and sexually assault female inmates? Or do they just not care?

Women Won’t Wheesht prostest

Her sense of shock and the awful aura of menace that closed in on her, still haunt former prisoner Amy.

Prison should have been free from the male predators who had sexually assaulted and raped her in her childhood – but the terrifying presence looming over her, a trans identified male (‘transwoman’) prisoner in a blonde wig, was broad-shouldered, muscular and very obviously a man.

“The look in his eyes was frightening,’ Amy says, her voice quiet but assertive.

“He leered at me before lunging forward and grabbing my breasts hard. He squeezed them and I cried out in pain. I was terrified he would rape me.

“As he grabbed my breasts, he said something truly disgusting about what he wanted to do to me.”

Amy was well aware that J still had male genitalia because he often intimidated her and fellow female prisoners at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Kent, by exposing them.

Moreover, J was serving time for a serious sexual assault on a child and was clearly a danger to other inmates. Yet he had secured a coveted job as a cleaner at the prison gym where Amy also worked. And it was while she was in the gym’s lavatory block that J assaulted her in 2017.

“J was wearing a short blonde wig, heavy blusher and eyeshadow. I could see his five o’clock shadow under the foundation,’ says Amy. ‘What were the officers even thinking, letting him clean toilets in which women would be in a state of undress and alone? Why was there a child sex offender with a penis cleaning the toilets of the gym in a women’s prison?”

J had already stridently asserted his ‘right’ to be treated exactly like other women prisoners, although this clearly terrorised them.

“When J went for a shower, the prison put a sign on the door saying that no-one else should enter, because they knew it could upset the women if they saw him naked, but J objected to this and said it was an infringement of his human rights,” says Amy.

“He said, ‘I am a woman and I want to shower with other women’. Just before he assaulted me, he was seen with the shower curtain open, shaving his genitals in full view of the women.”

Amy, 38, mother to a daughter, is an articulate woman; small in stature with thick, auburn hair and milky white skin. On the day we meet in a café she has been released from prison, half way through a nine-year sentence for drug-related crime which, she began in 2016. She is smartly dressed in black shirt and cream trousers; quick-witted, innately intelligent – but also very angry.

The reason? Amy had learned that she had failed in a personal challenge to compel the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to forbid high-risk transwomen prisoners – sex offenders like J – from being incarcerated in female prisons.

Amy brought the civil action against Sodexo, the private company who run HMP Bronzefield, and the MOJ.

She argued, through her lawyers, that the law currently discriminates against women prisoners and that the Government has failed to take into account the provisions of the Equality Act which allow for certain single-sex exemptions, permitting men and women to use separate facilities in particularly sensitive circumstances.

The case, for which Amy did not give evidence, involved legal arguments only; neither has J faced any police investigation or charges for the alleged assault.

In a judgement handed down by email, Lord Justice Holroyd accepted there were real concerns raised by Amy, and that “a substantial proportion of women prisoners have been the victims of sexual abuse and/or domestic violence”.

He accepted that many would, “suffer fear and acute anxiety if required to share prison accommodation and facilities with transgender women with male genitalia and convictions for sexual and violent offences against women”.

He also allowed that the statistical evidence showed the proportion of trans-prisoners convicted of sexual offences was "substantially higher" than for non-transgender men and women prisoners.

But he said this specific claim was a "misuse of the statistics, which... are so low in number, and so lacking in detail, that they are an unsafe basis for general conclusions".

Trans rights activists at the Labour Party Conference

Between 2016 and 2019, 97 sexual assaults were recorded in women's prisons, the judgement said. Of these, it appears that seven were committed by transgender prisoners without a GRC. It is not known whether any were committed by transgender women with a GRC because they are, apparently, disregarded in Government figures.

As of March 2019, there were 34 transgender women without GRCs allocated to a woman's prison. The number of transgender prisoners with a certificate – of which J is one – is thought to be in single-figures across the prison population as a whole.

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 gaol HMP New Hall in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and sexually assaulted two women inmates.

Karen White dressed as a woman but was still legally a man and had not undergone surgery. He was jailed for life in 2018 by a judge who branded him a 'highly manipulative' predator.

Karen White

Despite the history of such assaults, last week the court decided that, ultimately, the rights of transwomen trumped the concerns of female prisoners.

For Amy, who was given legal aid to pursue the case – from which she did not benefit financially – the ruling is profoundly unjust.

Contending that the law needs to be changed, she says the equation is a simple one: “If a transwoman is in for violence against women, or sex offences against women or children, you should not be in prison with women.”

Transwomen prisoners were already housed at Bronzefield when Amy arrived there, soon after the law was changed to accommodate them in female jails.

“I was a bit shocked because I knew they were sex offenders. An officer told me that, off the record,’ she says. ‘The other women in prison who knew were in shock and angry, too.

“It’s like putting a crack addict in a crack house, or an alcoholic in a pub. Male sex offenders should never be in prison with women. Most women in there have gone through child abuse and domestic violence and rape. What if someone is raped?”

She continues: “J would wear a long flowery skirt and sit with his legs wide open. A number of the other girls said it was very distressing to see that.”

Since her release, Amy has been supporting women victims of domestic abuse on a voluntary basis.

Her own story highlights how the sexual violence perpetrated against her shaped her life and led to her spiral into addiction and crime.

Growing up in a big family in south London, she was raped at 13 – coincidentally the same age as one of the children who was sexually assaulted by J; a crime that led to her conviction – and began drinking and smoking crack.

“I then went out of control and began my life of crime, stealing in order to pay for my drugs. Sexual predators would target me, especially when I was in and out of care.”

At 15, Amy was sent to the youth offender wing of a prison, which was the start of a string of drug-related crimes and prison sentences.

Although she hated prison, Amy tells me that away from male sexual predators and among other women who had been through similar experiences, she felt safe for the first time in her life.

“But I stopped feeling safe knowing trans sex offenders were housed beside me.”

Amy’s fears were, sadly, not misplaced: a year or so into her sentence she was sexually assaulted by J.

It is pertinent, too, that she was working at the time in the prison gym – a vital provision because it allowed prisoners to “let off steam, talk to others and get off the wing for a bit”, generally improving their mental health.

But these beneficial effects were nullified when J was given the job of gym cleaner.

The sexual assault took place in the toilets of the gym, which were left unguarded and without CCTV.

Ruth Hunt, former CEO, Stonewall, who is in large part responsible for this bullshit

“It was supposed to be my sanctuary,” says Amy. “I felt so distressed. Prison is an awful place to be under any circumstances, and this just made it 100 times worse.”

It seems that J – wielding the threat that any criticism of his behaviour would be considered ‘transphobic’ – was permitted concessions that would not be granted to other (female)  prisoners.

Although rules state that most cosmetics purchased from outside the prison are banned, J was allowed to have toiletries brought in, including perfume in glass bottles, heated rollers, make-up and a razor to shave his face.

“Trans prisoners claim they have to disguise their beards and want to look feminine so that they pass as women, so they are given special privileges,” explains Amy.

She believes that J had planned the assault and knew that it was likely he would be in the gym when J was cleaning. “I think he targeted me on purpose and waited until the coast was clear.

“After it happened, I went back to my room and couldn’t stop shaking. It brought back feelings of trauma about all the previous times when I’ve been attacked by men. I went to the senior officer and told her what had happened and asked why a child sex offender with a penis was allowed to clean the women’s toilets in the gym?”

The officer simply said: “Everyone deserves a second chance.” She adds: “These people are master manipulators, and if they sniff vulnerability they target it. At the same time, they are going on about their human rights and scaring the prison officers into looking the other way.

“After J assaulted me, I would see him around the prison on a regular basis. He would leer at me and smirk.”

Amy and a number of other women had been informed that J had been sent to the segregation unit as punishment for not taking the medication that prevented his penis getting erect, “which begs the question, ‘Why was he still allowed around us?’”

Appalled by the inadequate response from prison officers to the assault, and frightened of what would happen next, she took legal action against the prison service and applied to move to a different gaol.

Extraordinarily she was transferred to HMP Downview in Banstead, Surrey, which had just established a wing for high-risk transwomen with a GRC. 

The new unit was originally intended for up to 15 female prisoners who were being released on temporary licence but was never used for this purpose.

By awful coincidence, it was recommissioned for four high-risk transwomen prisoners, all of whom successfully challenged their allocation to this wing as ‘transphobic’. All four are now back in the general prison population. 

On arriving at Downview, Amy was horrified to discover J was also in the same prison: “The reception officer told me and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

‘They had moved me for my own protection, and then I ended up back in the same prison as this person who had sexually assaulted me.”

At Downview she discovered she was far from alone in being terrified of J. “Quite a few women were scared of J, because he would rub up against them in the dinner queue with an erect penis.

‘He would wear very tight trousers which made it obvious he had male genitals. The prison officers protected him more than they did us. They were terrified of being accused of transphobia.”

So as J continues her sentence in the general prison population, Amy’s fears are for the women still terrorised by him.

I meet her on the morning the judgement is made public and as the news comes through she looks distraught.

“I am on the outside now,” she says, with tears in her eyes, “but what about those young girls, so vulnerable and tiny against men like J? Who will protect them now that the law has decided they have a right to be in prison with women?”

This week’s judgement recognises that housing transwomen with convictions for sexual offences creates a real risk but considers the prison service has put measures in place to manage that risk.

But the evidence seems to belie this.

Indeed Amy’s case against the prison services was bolstered by a statement from another prisoner at HMP Bronzefield who also complained of assault by J.

The woman, known as XSM, reported two assaults: “Once when standing in line for dinner, the second time in my room. He pressed her genitals against my buttocks. There were witnesses to the incidents and comments made by J.”

Yet the prison did not report the assaults by J on either woman to the police.

“The staff turned a blind eye to this behaviour. They protected themselves and didn’t speak out because they are worried that they would get into trouble because of the trans policy in prison; a policy which doesn’t consider the impact on women prisoners,” says Amy.

She adds:  “I have nothing against transgender people. It is the sex offenders that I have a problem with. This kind of thing is happening to women all the time in prisons. I owe it to them to continue to raise this issue and to get the public up in arms about it. Even though we are prisoners and we have committed crimes, we are all human beings.”

Meanwhile Ian Whiteside, Prison Director at HMP Bronzefield, offers:

“As this case is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to comment further except to say that the safety and welfare of all those living and working within our prisons is of paramount importance to us."

Amy would contest this. “Some female prisoners have been punished for ‘transphobic behaviour’ when complaining about transwomen being housed among us.  It’s outrageous. How could they not recognise the danger we were in?

“J is a serious sex offender. This judges’ decision is insulting to his victims, to all female prisoners and to women everywhere. But at least this case will have alerted the authorities to how dangerous J is.”

Amy believes the outcome of the case is so iniquitous that she intends to continue to campaign.

“I want to train as a lawyer,” she tells me. “I want to help women who have been unfortunate enough to end up in prison because of the abuse they suffered in childhood and beyond.

“I would never have imagined this; that male sex offenders would be allowed to prey on the most vulnerable women in society.”

*Pseudonyms have been used.