Dangerous sex offender transferred to women's prison, Peterborough

I would also come to Peterborough to protest.
I can't believe this is actually happening. Its like a sick joke.

I actually cried with anger and despair reading this on Twitter this morning. I was going to post a thread but thought I should wait until I was calmer.
HOW is a paedophile allowed to get a GRC while inside ? HOW is it acceptable to house him with women while he “waits for surgery” I think that will be a looooong wait eh ?
I am going to write to my MP about this. What else can we do ?

I'm willing to go to Peterborough if a protest is organised.

[applauds Seafret]

I think some lawyer somewhere should be demanding the rights of the women in there to be housed in a female only prison. We need a test case a victim needs to be able to prosecute these attackers and the prison service or whoever this mess boils down to. This can’t be allowed to go on any longer it’s horrific.

I've started a thread in AIBU god help me. This has to stop

There are 12 transwomen inmates at Littlehey (men’s estate) according to recent news reports. One of them is child rapist, Carrie Cooper:

metro.co.uk/2018/09/08/rapist-transgender-woman-found-guilty-despite-calling-new-abuse-case-bks-7925539/

www.huntspost.co.uk/news/concern-over-access-to-avon-catalogue-for-transgender-inmates-1-5581733

Littlehey is almost all sex offenders.

Seeing as being an incarcerated sex offender is not a a barrier to receiving a GRC, can we assume the other trans inmates (either 11 or 12 of them, depending on whether Lewin was counted as one of the 12 or not back in June) will also be looking to move to the women’s estate, following Lewin’s example?

I wonder if we could start a mass letter writing campaign to imprisoned women? Both to offer solidarity and to hear their testimony, should they want to share it?

The voices of women prisoners are very much missing from this discussion.

The latter, Angry. I've not held my tongue and I don't give a fuck if she thinks I'm a terf.

Thank you LauraMipsum Was worries by that article written by a lawyer a while ago about was it parity? Measuring treatment of a TW against other men or women would have different outcomes? Thanks for clearing it up

In the sense of let's pretend that there are no transwomen who're pedophiles or rapists because NoTrueTrans or in the sense that they're defending the right of these specific known pedos and rapists (White etc) to be in those spaces?

I don't think I'd be able to hold my tongue if it was the latter.

@MacaroonMama - no, it's not case law. There's no precedent set by it, but equally if this person has 2 diagnoses of dysphoria and has lived "as a woman" for 2 years (as far as possible at HMP Littlehey) then there's no further measure of suitability for a GRC.

One of my friends is passionately defending the "moral case" for letting paedophiles and rapists into women's prisons. i'm just horrified that this is now the supposedly progressive position.

Completely radical, off the cuff suggestion by the estimable Dr Kathleen Stock:

This person is reported as getting a Gender Recignition Certificate +in prison+. I had to get DBS checked the other day to mentor a uni applicant. This needs to stop. GRCs should not be issued to anyone with criminal record after age of 18. All applicants should be DBS checked. (For formatting reasons I needed to change Stock's ** to ++)

twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1041933044930752512

I'm not ensure that is wholly practical/appropriate (my socialisation is flooding my mind with "whatabouteries") but I completely understand what prompts the comment.

The law and judicial decisions are a disgrace and completely contrary. As Rowan says other judges have ruled that a prisoner must be transferred so that a man can live as a woamn to qualify for a GRC, yet this paedophile already managed it. FFS.

Single sex exemptions can be applied but are not. Name changes can be refused by the gov to sex offenders but are not. Stopping them changing their name would stop them even beginning to live as a woman.

NONE of the 'safeguards' work. NONE of this should ever have begun. No man has a 'right' to become a (fictional) woman.

Have just emailed this and the Karen White stuff to my MP who is on the justice select committee. I met him nearly a year ago and he was broadly supportive but didn’t think it would come to anything. Well it has.

I just cannot get my head around the presumably rationale people who are making these decisions and going along with this.

It is terrifying the ideologies you can convince people to go along with, through fear of social rejection and isolation. Once something becomes seen as the 'acceptable' view so few people will speak up, or even think rationally.

It is genuinely frightening. Ir makes me reflect on so much history that previously felt it could never happen now,.
But it is happening now, authorities are going along with madness, damaging madness, right here and now.

I have had enough now. That book by Carol Shields ‘Unless’, where the daughter quits life to sit with a sign round her neck in silent protest - feeling v similar. But, as I imagine all of you do, there are the caring responsibilities, the children, the jobs around that etc. Just had to share that image as that is how I feel right now. Women and children are being thrown under a bus 😭

Will this be used as case law? Absolutely not a lawyer, but the thought of a convicted sex offender getting the GRC and this being protected by the EA scares the bejesus out of me. Can it be used as legal precedent for other sick men to gain access to women and children? Really worried now.

Up for a protest, at the Ministry of Justice?

Also, if one of the current criteria of obtaining a GRC is to live as a woman for two years and part of this living as woman is, as we've been repeatedly told, the necessity to access spaces and services for women (toilets, changing rooms, etc., etc.) how has this been achieved within a prison?

So a GRC establishes a "right" to be in the female estate according to the ECHR but what if this person proves to be as dangerous as Karen White? Can they be moved back to male prison or do they have to be segregated in female prison?

The TRAs and their handmaidens can't throw out the "not a true trans woman" trope about this individual, nor can they say no-one will go through the current process of getting a GRC or the far easier proposed self-id route in order to gain access to women and children for nefarious purposes.

When will the scales fall from the eyes of politicians et al regarding the insidious agenda behind this ideology?

FFS.

Yeah, let's make it easier for poor, misunderstood paedophiles to get put in jails with mother and baby units. You can always rely on a them to be fine, upstanding citizens with no ulterior motives at all, absolutely no question.

For fucking fucks sake, when will this end?

There is a big difference between this convict and Stephen White - but it throws a spotlight on the absurdity of the law.

With a Gender Recognition Certificate, and a new birth certificate, this convict is now classed as "female" for legal purposes.

She is protected under the Equality Act by virtue of her sex (female). No-one can question or challenge the new legal status.

She is no longer 'transgender' and she must be treated the same as any other female. To treat her differently would be unlawful discrimination.

So much for the reassurance that sex-based protections will remain in place. It's a lie.

Repeal the Gender Recognition Act.

I'm gobsmacked that this person managed to get a GRC, given we still have gatekeeping.

Any gatekeeping is in respect to the person seeking grc. It's to ensure that is right decision for them, not the general public.

• Why not let people change gender whenever they like, but base our laws and segregated facilities on sex?

Abso-bloody-lutely. I would have a law to prevent actual gender discrimination, ie people can dress as they wish regardless of their sex etc. Let men be as 'feminine' as they want, let women be as 'masculine'.

But any service where segregation is needed, it should be on sex not 'gender'.

It's quite evident from the comments under the articles that this is confusing a lot of people.

Many people think that to be trans, you have to have had the op.

They also think that gender reassignment means the op.

Men, in particular, think that having the op makes a man less intimidating.

I'm gobsmacked that this person managed to get a GRC, given we still have gatekeeping.

On the other hand, in a way it's unsurprising, given how there is such support for eliminating the criteria.

The people that signed off on this must know they have grounds for invoking exemptions.

Why don't they?