Andrew Gilligan in the Times (the real one):
An official who agreed a policy allowing male-bodied sex offenders into women’s prisons was a sex offender who hoarded 22,000 indecent pictures of children.
Gordon Pike, a senior official of the Scottish Prison Service, was one of those responsible for its “gender identity and gender reassignment policy”, documents seen by The Sunday Times show. The policy is significantly more liberal than England’s, stating that transgender prisoners must normally be housed according to the “social gender” with which they self-identify, “whether or not” they have legally changed it.
“Liberal” (in the sense of generous) from the point of view of transgender prisoners but not necessarily anyone else.
Two years after approving the policy, Pike, 57, was arrested at prison service headquarters in Edinburgh. Searching his home, police found 45 discs containing 22,100 indecent images of children, including 500 of “penetrative sexual activity” with minors. He was convicted of possession of sexual images of children in a trial ending last year and remains on the sex offenders’ register.
The prison policy, which also covers healthcare, is being used by a transgender sex offender and murderer, Paris Green, to make a 900-mile round trip from her Edinburgh prison to Sussex for private gender reassignment surgery, funded by taxpayers.
Green is serving life after she and two accomplices sexually assaulted a man with a rolling pin, tied him up, tortured him and beat him to death.
So typical of women, that kind of thing.
Born Peter Laing, Green identified as a woman in 2011, and was convicted two years later. Initially she was sent to a women’s jail but was moved back to a men’s wing after making advances to female prisoners.
Her surgery will be carried out at the private Nuffield hospital in Brighton, since there are no NHS facilities for it in Scotland. It will cost the NHS about £20,000, with the prison service facing a bill of up to £40,000 for transport and guarding during Green’s two-week stay.
Then will “she” go back to a women’s jail? To make more advances?
Some 48% of transgender prisoners are sex offenders, the Ministry of Justice said in a freedom of information answer earlier this year, compared with less than 20% of the prison population as a whole.
They include Karen White, born Stephen Wood, a double rapist who was sent to New Hall women’s jail last year, where she assaulted two female prisoners. She was returned to a male jail after the assaults.
Jessica Winfield, born Martin Ponting, another double rapist put in a women’s prison, was reportedly segregated after she made advances to other inmates.
Gender surgeons and prison governors have said that some male-born sex offenders are transitioning in order to gain access to women prisoners, or to appear less dangerous in the hope of earlier parole.
Or, indeed, both.
Ministry of Justice figures show the number of women in prison for sex offences has risen by 40% in three years, from 93 in 2015 to 130 this year. The figures do not distinguish between biological women and trans women.
Women’s campaigners said it was highly likely that much of the increase was accounted for by male-born transgender sex offenders such as White and Winfield, who are counted as female in the statistics.
Nicola Williams, of Fair Play for Women, which has begun a parliamentary petition to change the policy, said: “These latest disclosures are deeply disturbing. MPs should be asking why the prison system is turning a blind eye to the abuse of women in its care.”
And the abuse of statistics.
Oh well, it’s only women.
