‘I think the rights of women to feel safe trump’ a man’s rights
A former British prison official is warning that male prisoners who “self-identify” as females have been raping women in prisons.
Rory Stewart, a former Tory Cabinet minister, said men should not be given access to women’s facilities.
“The important thing is: I think the rights of women to feel safe trump the rights of somebody who’s biologically male to enter that space,” he said, DailyMail.com reported.
Stewart said that when he was prisons minister in 2018-2019, there were “situations of male prisoners self-identifying as females then raping staff in prison.”
He is now running for mayor of London.
DailyMail.com said his claim “will fuel questions about policies that have allowed criminals with male bodies to describe themselves as female and demand to be housed in women’s prisons.”
It’s estimated that 1,500 inmates identify as transgender in England and Wales.
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said it would be “appalling” if “people who have been convicted of sex offenses or offenses against women who then say they’re female then get access to women’s prisons.”
DailyMail.com noted it’s the “first public reference to trans women assaulting prison staff in women’s jails, but it follows warnings that allowing male-bodied criminals into female jails puts women in danger.”
In 2018, a inmate self-identifying as “Karen White,” after being born Stephen Wood, was allowed into a women’s prison, even though he was convicted of multiple rapes.
He subsequently was found to have sexually assaulted female inmates.
Male-Bodied Rapists Are Being Imprisoned With Women. Why Do so Few People Care? – Quillette
In 2015, the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS) submitted a written brief to the Transgender Equality Inquiry, which had been undertaken by the UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, explaining why it was “naïve to suggest that “nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case.” “There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this,” wrote Dr. James Barrett, the President of BAGIS. “These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my …
Source: Male-Bodied Rapists Are Being Imprisoned With Women. Why Do so Few People Care? – Quillette
