FORMER Tory Prisons Minister and current Independent candidate for London Mayor Rory Stewart has admitted that during his time in the latter role that transgender male prisoners who self-identified as such had raped female prisoners.
In the interview, when asked about whether people who self-identify as women should be allowed in to women-only spaces (like changing rooms or toilets), he claimed he was “instinctively worried about that”. His reasoning was that when he was Prisons Minister, “we had situations of male prisoners self-identifying as females then raping staff in prison”, and therefore it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
He added that society has to be ‘pretty cautious’ about such issues, and that for him “the important thing is… that the rights of women to feel safe trump the rights of somebody who’s biologically male to enter that space”. He continued the interview afterward and moved onto other topics, admitting he apologised to Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the fact that he was wrong over the chances of Boris getting a Brexit deal, his former nicknames and how being a backbencher in Parliament was a ‘terrible job’.
In response to the interview, a Prison Service spokesperson stated that “We have no record of this happening. Strict safeguards are in place to manage transgender prisoners while protecting our staff and other inmates”. During Stewart’s tenure as Prisons Officer, most of the transgender prisoners were those of men, with 111 out of the 139 of those being so.
An analysis by the Fair Play for Women charity, which found that 41% of transgender prisoners are former sex offenders. There have also been cases of transgender prisoners raping members of the opposite sex. Such cases include Karen White, a transgender woman who attacked who was jailed for sexually assaulting two women in prison. This has led to some government officials urging Boris Johnson to tackle the problem, like Lord Blencathra, whose plea was previously covered here on Politicalite.