I work in this field
In my experience, a judge would always apologise for a 3 year delay in conviction, to anyone, convicted of any crime. The Court has a duty to provide fair and equal justice to everyone, and 3 years with not knowing what would happen to you would be regarded as a cruel and unusual punishment. So yes, the judge should and did apologise.
But yeah, it’s a crime committed by a man, and he should be treated as a man. He should be nowhere near a female prison. Sex offender treatment is male only, but that is because there is absolutely no reliable research on how to treat a female sex offender, because they are so rare, there isn’t enough data. But this is a man, so the treatment would work. My concern is how disruptive the presence of someone in a dress and heels would be in a male group of sex offenders, who are there for treatment, however the work can be carried out on a one to one basis, and that is what we have done with transgender offenders in the past. For their safety, and the needs of the rest of the group.
Image possession offenders generally don’t go to jail, for two reasons. One, current research shows that they are generally very unlikely to commit a further offence once caught, and two, depressingly, there are so many of them, we cannot physically accommodate them in our prisons.