Season 2 Episode 5

Stassja Frei: Warning: this episode contains descriptions of male violence and is not suitable for young children. Listener discretion is advised.

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In 2017, a UK man calling himself Karen White was in prison awaiting trial for grievous bodily harm. He had stabbed his neighbour – an elderly man – multiple times with a steak knife. 

White already had a disturbing rap sheet. In 1989 when he was known as Stephen Terence Wood, he was convicted of indecent exposure after flashing his genitals at children in a playground. In 2001 his sexual offending escalated and he was convicted of indecent assault and gross indecency against a child. His victims were two young boys aged 9 and 12. For this he was sentenced to a measly 18 months in prison. While in prison he changed his name to David Thompson.

When he was arrested again in 2017 for stabbing his neighbour, the UK Ministry of Justice had just updated its policy on the care and management of transgender offenders. Prisoners were now granted the right to be housed according to their gender identity. No need for hormones or sex reassignment surgery. Men who say they’re women could now apply to be transferred to a women’s prison. And that is exactly what Karen White did.

Despite his history of sexual crimes, a board made up of prison managers and psychologists decided it was a good idea to transfer White to a women’s prison. It’s not hard to guess what happened next. White of course went on to sexually assault at least two female inmates.

He also wrote a letter to one of his victims on the outside. He’d met the woman in a psychiatric unit and they’d entered into a relationship during which he raped her five or six times. She returned the letter and requested that the prison prevent him from sending any further correspondence. This prompted an investigation. Soon police uncovered yet another of White’s victims. This was a woman who he’d raped in 2003. In this instance, White had offered to help decorate the woman’s flat. She was two months pregnant at the time. Whilst in her home, he spiked her drink with vodka until she passed out and then raped her. She woke with him on top of her. The woman told her husband what had happened but he didn’t believe her and the incident had ruined her life.

White confessed to the rapes and to having sexually assaulted the two female prisoners. The crimes were added on to the original charge of grievous bodily harm. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 9 and a half years.

For most normal people, the story of Karen White is truly horrifying. It represents a complete failure of common sense and a total disregard for women’s safety and wellbeing. But there’s an equally horrifying case that predates Karen White by nearly 20 years. I would argue that it’s perhaps even more horrifying. And it happened right here in Australia. It’s the case of convicted murderer and transgender woman, Maddison Hall formerly known as Noel Compton Hall.

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Welcome back to Desexing Society. I’m your host Stassja Frei. Episode 5: Prisons

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It was my gender critical colleague Janet Fraser who first made me aware of Noel Compton Hall. Janet is a radical feminist, a home birth advocate, an historian and she’s nearing the completion of her second university degree, this one in law.

Janet Fraser: Noel Compton Hall was found guilty by a jury of murdering a man called Lyn Saunders on the 22^nd of December 1987 at a place called Gol Gol which is in country NSW. Lyn Saunders was hitch hiking to Adelaide to see his parents because his car broke down so he was no longer able to drive it. So it’s thought that what happened is Hall’s friend picked him up in his car and they were joined by Hall and it’s believed that they thought Lyn had contacts who would help them buy drugs, specifically marijuana, and when this didn’t come to fruition Hall got very angry, became enraged and he killed him with a sawn off shotgun that he was carrying that he’d doctored himself. So he shot this young man in the back and then after he fell to the ground he shot him in the mouth and blew the back of his skull off.

Stassja Frei: The murder of Lyn Saunders remained unsolved for a time. The TV program Australia’s Most Wanted picked up the story and soon after it went to air, an anonymous woman phoned in and named Noel Compton Hall as the perpetrator.

Just a slight technicality before we go on. In court documents he’s named as Noel Compton Hall. But for some reason, in media reports he’s called Noel Crompton Hall. We’re guessing that the court documents are correct, not the media.

In 1989, Hall was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. At some point during the next 10 years, he began identifying as a woman and started taking oestrogen. Then in 1999 he requested to be transferred to a women’s prison.

Janet Fraser: It seems as if the 1996 amendments to the Anti Discrimination Act in NSW created a situation where a man like that could claim a trans identity and have himself moved into a women’s prison. 

Stassja Frei: You might remember from the last episode that the 1996 amendments to the NSW Anti Discrimination Act are what drove lesbian events underground. The changes meant that lesbians in NSW could no longer hold public events without including men who call themselves lesbians. Those same amendments had very dangerous consequences for women in prison.

Janet Fraser: There was at that time what they called a recognised transgender person, which meant someone who had had the genital surgery and there were two doctors who’d attest to it. But there was also the transgender person who was or intended to live as the opposite sex. So there’s no surgery, no papers, you just report your intention is to live as the opposite sex. So I imagine that that was the category that he fell into at that time. And there’s no specific mention of prisons in those amendments so it’s likely that he argued it just plain discrimination really ie that he was treated differently from a person without his characteristics. So because he said he was a woman he couldn’t be treated differently from other women, he had to be put in a women’s prison.

Stassja Frei: And put in a women’s prison he was. Within eight months of his stay at Mulawa Women’s Prison he was accused of serious sexual offences against his fellow inmates.

Janet Fraser: It didn’t go well for the women of Mulawa. So the first rape allegation was in 1999. Other women said that they were forced to have sex with him. I’m not sure what the difference is there but I think that they considered that they were in a relationship with him and he forced them to have sex. So somehow that was assumed to be different. 

Stassja Frei: Hall was moved back to a men’s prison and charged with rape. But when his accuser was released from prison, she moved home to New Zealand and the charges were dropped. 

Janet Fraser: And bear in mind that through this time he was HIV+ so the likelihood is that he infected all these women. And you would think the government had a duty of care towards those women.

Stassja Frei: This is why I think Hall’s case is even more egregious than that of Karen White. White was charged with the sexual assault female inmates, not rape. And White wasn’t HIV+. The NSW government had set a sexual predator with HIV loose in a women’s prison.

In 2001 Hall’s sentence was recalculated, not for good behaviour but because his original sentence of life in prison had occurred under what was known as truth in sentencing laws.

Janet Fraser: So truth in sentencing was legislative changes made in 1989. So it abolished things like remission which is a reduction in your sentence for good behaviour in prison. It increased the length of non parole periods and the result of it was an increase in sentencing lengths by about 19% for adults and 30% for children and a 30% increase in the prison population over the first 2 years of that Liberal government. So in the 80s and 90s in NSW, law and order was the great political football and so the Liberal government introduced this truth in sentencing and then the Labor government wasn’t about to be shown up to be going lite on crims so they increased as well and then by the time we get to him, I think what’s happened is people decided that some of those prison sentences were too harsh and so they were recalculated as a result. So that’s definitely what happened to him.

Stassja Frei: Hall’s sentence of life in prison was reduced to 22 years with a minimum of just 16 and a half years. It meant he would be eligible for parole in 2006. But he didn’t want to spend the next 5 years in a men’s prison. He wanted to go back in with the women.

Janet Fraser: So he sued because he’d been put back in the men’s prison. 

Stassja Frei: We couldn’t find exact details of what Hall sued for. One newspaper article mentions “psychological trauma” as the basis of his claim. Janet suspects he could’ve argued this angle because he’d been kept in segregation at various points due to his trans identity.

Janet Fraser: He won his case that was about, as I understand it, segregation and his trans identity that he is claiming, and won this $25,000 settlement and used that to pay for his own sex change, yeah, for his castration and probable breast implants I imagine. And it was a huge scandal, like this also came up in the parliament because basically the NSW government paid for his sex change, right? 

Stassja Frei: With his new genitals came a new name: Maddison Hall. But there are questions around his claim of psychological trauma. Was it really so traumatising for him in the men’s prison? Or was this more of an exercise in power and control?

Janet Fraser: Cos at some point in his prison time he was prostituting himself in men’s prison Junee in exchange for drugs. So I don’t know what that means in terms of him accessing the general population. Is he really in that much danger if he was actually actively seeking sex in order to access drugs? I don’t know. I don’t know how those things work but I think that’s kind of interesting.

Stassja Frei: Hall was moved back into Mulawa Women’s Prison and in 2006 he was eligible for parole.

Janet Fraser: He served his minimum, so the 16 and a half years. He applied for parole which he was refused in the February of 2006. Then he was granted parole in July but the government challenged the granting of that parole and they lost in August but then his accommodation plans fell through so the State Parole Authority revoked his parole order. And I think it’s important to note that if you go to the end of your sentence, like if he’d served the whole 22 years and then been released, there’s no monitoring in the community. Whereas if you get let out on parole, you get monitored to the end of your sentence. So Lyn Saunders’ mother was keen for him to come out before he hit that 22 year mark so that he would still be monitored in the community.

Stassja Frei: The State Parole Authority said they had revoked his parole because his accommodation fell through. But The Daily Telegraph reported that, quote: “The move came just hours after The Daily Telegraph revealed Hall’s catalogue of secret sex crimes while in jail.” End quote. The newspaper had obtained the transcript from the July parole hearing in which it was decided to grant him parole. The transcript listed the rape allegations from his first stint in Mulawa Women’s Prison. And it listed more offences that occurred after he’d had the sex reassignment surgery. 

Janet Fraser: And there were two sexual assaults at least in late 2004. Another woman alleged that she’d witnessed inappropriate sexual behaviour and the psychiatrist, who’s Dr Michael Giuffria considered that the allegations, while they weren’t proven, were consistent with how he thought Hall would behave and thought that there was a moderate to higher risk of him continuing to offend in this way.

Stassja Frei: Despite all of this information being presented to the State Parole Authority, they had still decided to grant him parole. 

Janet Fraser: I think it’s a really curious decision and it’s hard not to think that the trans out of jail card was a part of it. When you read the judgements about the parole it seems that the psychiatrist and the psychologist who interviewed him and received reports on his behaviour in prison both thought he was off drugs, he was remorseful, he’d developed coping strategies so he didn’t react violently to stress and people would be safe around him in the community basically. But the reports are, in my opinion, extremely glowing about this man but it’s largely based on his self reporting, so surely we know that a person who murders because of, well, for no reason, a person who cold bloodedly murders a total stranger and is a massive drug user and is alleged to have committed all these sexual offences in prison and was violent towards other prisoners, why would we believe his self reports? It’s like they shift into this sacred caste status the moment they pull that one. And I think men are deeply, well people in general are deeply sympathetic to the archetype of the wounded man, you know, so those wounded men get all the sympathy that the women who were in prison with him should’ve been getting. But we don’t have sympathy for them. That’s not left over. There’s none left, we used it all up on this man with his blonde wig and his orange beanie.

Stassja Frei: The Daily Telegraph’s reporting had certainly embarrassed the Parole Authority. Perhaps that did play a part in them revoking his parole. Hall would remain behind bars for another 3 and a half years before he was finally granted parole in April 2010.

Janet Fraser: Lyn Saunders’ mum’s quote at the time about “if dreadful criminals’ behaviours could be assuaged by the addition of oestrogen, I’m sure it would be prescribed” – I think she’s onto something there. Certainly the people who were affected by his murder of Lyn Saunders felt that it was bullshit that he could pretend to be the opposite sex, have his sentence changed and then be out on parole. Especially having won that settlement from the government.

Stassja Frei: Lyn’s mother, Marrion Saunders also told The Daily Telegraph that quote: “I can’t get my head around the fact that Hall is a woman now. No woman would have done what he did to Lyn.” End quote.

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In 2018, radical feminist Steph Hughes decided she could no longer stay silent about the impact of transgender laws on girls and women. So she and a friend started the Facebook page Fair Go for Queensland Women. 

One of Steph’s particular areas of interest is criminology.

Steph Hughes: Males commit the vast majority of crimes and violence in our society and that’s an enduring issue across time and across place. So you know it’s basically regarded as a truism in criminology that males are far more violent and commit far more crimes than females. And I became curious as to, well the mantra is ‘transwomen are women’ well if that is the case, surely then transwomen should be committing offences at the same rates as women.

Stassja Frei: Steph had heard the story of Karen White and she knew that men in women’s prisons was a big problem. She wanted to see what Queensland prison data could tell us about transwomen. So she submitted multiple Right to Information requests to Queensland Corrective Services. She now has 11 years of data starting from 30^th June 2013 through to 30^th of June 2023. For each year, the data shows how many people were in prison and why. Because some prisoners are serving time for more than one conviction, Corrective Services tallies them according to the most serious crime, with murder of course being top of the list. The data is also divided by sex, showing how many prisoners are in male facilities versus female facilities. From there, it’s further divided to show how many in male prisons are quote unquote “cis gender” and how many identify as transgender. And the same for trans identifying females in women’s prisons. You’ll remember that cis gender is how trans activists describe those of us who are not transgender. 

Now here is where it starts to get a bit murky. It used to be the case that to change your sex on your birth certificate in Queensland, you had to have sex reassignment surgery. So if you were a man who’d had the surgery, changed your birth certificate, then committed a crime, you would be counted as female and housed in a women’s prison. 

Steph Hughes: So I also want to be really clear that I have consistently and repeatedly asked for data related to what we used to term transsexuals, so individuals who through previous Queensland legislation changed their birth certificates after having surgery. At no time have I received information- and it seems like there’s no way for us to be really sure how many or if any males have been placed in the female prison estate, officially, and their crimes recorded as female, officially, on Queensland Corrective Services’ data. Unofficially I have been told that males who have gone through those surgical procedures have been placed in the female prison estate in Queensland and that it’s caused considerable distress to the female population when it has occurred.

Stassja Frei: In 2022 I submitted my own Freedom of Information request to Corrections Victoria. I asked how many transgender women aka biological males were housed in Victorian women’s prisons. I received a response similar to what Steph was told. They’re simply not tracking it. The reply said, quote: “The Corrections Victoria prison database, the Prisoner Information Management System (PIMS), does not allow this information to be collected in a way that can be extracted.” End quote. Reading between the lines, it’s my understanding that there is no field in the database to record a prisoner’s transgender status. So men who have changed their legal sex to female are simply recorded in the database as female. Having worked with various databases over the years, I can tell you that it’s not that hard to add a new field to a database. 

Steph Hughes: This was and remains a really big worry to me, that males have been placed in the female prison estate and we’re not adequately keeping track of it. Particularly in light of our responsibilities to the UN and I’m referring to the Mandela Rules which require that males and females must have sex segregated prisons. You know, they must- males and females must be held separately.

Stassja Frei: The Nelson Mandela Rules state that quote, “Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions.” End quote. 

What I find totally baffling is that Queensland Corrective Services is able to keep track of how many men in male prisons claim to be transgender, but they’re unable to track how many such men they’ve placed in women’s prisons. It just doesn’t add up. It’s almost as if they know that men in women’s prisons is incredibly dangerous and unpopular so they’re deliberately hiding the evidence.

Just to be crystal clear, the data that Steph has been working with looks at men who claim to be women who are housed in men’s prisons. So what are some of her findings?

Steph Hughes: Every year, 2013 to 2023, the male prison population greatly outweighed the female prison population. So for example in 2013 there were 5523 prisoners in the male facility – facilities sorry – and on the same date, 536 females in the female prison estate. Remembering, we can’t be certain how many of those might or might not have been males who have changed their birth certificates. That pattern, even with the increases in prison population over the 10 or 11 years, the pattern’s repeated in 2023 where there were 9182 detainees in the male prison estate and 975 in the female estate. So this aligns with the basic truism of criminology that males commit the vast majority of crimes. It’s around 90% to 10.

Stassja Frei: Of all prisoners in Queensland, roughly 90% are men and 10% are women. And this has been consistent for the decade starting in 2013. But what happens when we compare trans identified males with trans identified females?

Steph Hughes: Between 2013 to 2023 there’s consistently been far more males who identify as transgender than females detained in our Queensland prisons.

Stassja Frei: For most years, the transgender prison population was made up entirely of biological males. There were no female prisoners identifying as trans. Even in 2023 when there were a whopping 3 female prisoners identifying as men, those women made up only 4.4% of the transgender prison population. So already we can see that men who say they’re women are far more prone to criminality than women who say that they’re men.

Steph Hughes: My hypothesis when I first started out was, let’s just see what it’s like in Queensland because everybody is saying transwomen are women, let’s see if they are in terms of crime. And my first hypothesis has been borne out. The sex of a person is still indicative of whether they are more or less likely to commit a crime. Based on the data we have, certainly seems that males who identify as transgender retain male criminality. 

Stassja Frei: In other words, transwomen are men.

Let’s drill down and look at the stats for the most serious crime, murder. Just looking at the raw numbers alone, we can already see a stark difference between males and females. For example, in 2023, imprisoned for the charge or conviction of murder there were: 425 men, 47 women, 5 men who say they’re women and zero women who say they’re men. If those 5 men who say they’re women were counted as actual females, it would increase the number of female murderers by 10%

Steph Hughes: If the trans population is a tiny population, how can they increase the female murder stats by 10%? It’s quite a large proportion when you think here’s all of Queensland’s women and here’s this tiny allegedly vulnerable and not at all a risk to anybody population, how did they become accountable for over 10%, like how can they be held on charge or conviction, at seemingly a much higher rate than women?

Stassja Frei: The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that just 0.9% of the adult population identifies as transgender. Let’s assume that’s equally split between males and females. That would mean just 0.45% of the adult population are men who say that they’re women. As Steph points out, how can such a tiny demographic have such a drastic impact on the stats for female murderers? Could it be something to do with the fact that they’re men and men commit far more murders than women?

When we look at the Queensland figures for aggravated sexual assault the pattern of male criminality amongst transwomen is even more pronounced than it is in the murder stats.

Steph Hughes: In Queensland in 2023 on the 30th of June, the number of so called cis gender males in the male prison estate, charged or convicted with aggravated sexual assault was 1177. The number of males in the male estate who said they were transgender and charged or convicted of aggravated sexual assault was 15. On the same date in the female estate, there were 15 women charged or convicted of aggravated sexual assault. So if you roll all of those males who say they’re trans into the female data you will increase it by 100% and you know, this is 15 women out of the entire adult population of Queensland women. 15. But it’s 15 males who say they’re transgender out of the total population of males who say they’re transgender in our state.

Stassja Frei: For every year of data that Steph has obtained, aggravated sexual assault is either the top crime amongst trans identified males or comes in at second place.

This is consistent with data from the UK that shows that men who claim to be women commit sexual violence at a far higher rate than other men. Through Freedom of Information requests and statistics released by the UK Ministry of Justice, campaign group Fair Play for Women have identified alarming rates of sexual violence.

For example, in England and Wales in 2019, there were 129 trans identified men in male prisons. 76 of those men had committed sexual offences. That’s more than half. 58.9% to be precise. For their fellow men who know that they’re men 16.8% were in prison for sexual crimes. For women it was just 3.3%. 

Similar findings were made by the Correctional Service of Canada. In their study titled Gender diverse offenders with a history of sexual offending, they found that 44% of transwomen in prison had current or prior convictions for sexual offences.

It would seem that men who say they’re women are more likely than other men to commit sexual violence. Which begs the question, why are we allowing such men access to girls and women in confined spaces like toilets, change rooms and prisons?

For further confirmation that transwomen are not women, we can look to a research paper from 2011 titled, Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden. 

Steph Hughes: Because some trans activists have purported that feminists and gender critical people have misrepresented what was in the study, but I just want to say that, this is a quote directly from the study. It said that they looked at any criminal conviction during follow up. Specifically violent crime as defined by homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault and assault, robbery, threatening behaviour, harassment, arson or any sexual offence. So they researched a group, the group was comprised of 324 people who changed their legal sex between 1973 and 2003. And 191 of those individuals were male and 133 were female. 

Stassja Frei: All of the research subjects had undergone sex reassignment surgery.

Steph Hughes: They found that, and this is a direct quote, “regarding any crime, male to females had a significantly increased risk for crime, compared to female controls, but not compared to males. This indicates they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime.”

Stassja Frei: Transwomen are still men, even when they’ve had sex reassignment surgery. But as we know, it’s not just men who’ve had the surgery that are being moved into women’s prisons. Karen White for example, still had his male genitalia. As did Australian murderer Noel Compton Hall when he was first transferred to Mulawa Women’s Prison. With the introduction of self-ID laws across Australia, corrective services have been forced to update their policies, making it far easier for men to transfer to women’s prisons. Aside from making prisons far more dangerous for women, it’s also framing women for men’s crimes. This has led to the gender critical hashtag, ‘not our crimes’

Steph Hughes: So ‘not our crimes’ in its simplest terms is a rejection and a protest of police and government and the media reporting and recording males and crimes committed by males as if they’re committed by women. It’s a protest and like I view it as a defamation of women. When media outlets say ‘woman stabs dog’ which is a headline I saw yesterday from I think the UK. And it’s like, there’s a picture of the alleged offender and it’s clearly a male. And throughout the media report they use female pronouns for this obvious male and it’s and ugh, it’s unfair to like, no other group would a media organisation say ‘this person is this and they’ve committed this crime’ falsely, but they do it to women. And it’s profoundly unfair to us. And misleading. And inaccurate. So that’s where, that’s what I think ‘not our crimes’ means.

Stassja Frei: Imagine, for example, if crimes committed by white American men were recorded as having been committed by black American men. Firstly, it would never even happen to begin with because it’s so clearly wrong. But if it did happen, the level of outrage would be so overwhelming, the data corruption would be immediately reversed. But when it comes to framing women for male violence, hardly anyone bats an eye. Not even the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In 2021 it became starkly apparent that female crime data had been corrupted. For the year ending 30^th of June 2021, females convicted of sexual assault jumped by 38%. For comparison, for men convicted of the same crime in the same period, the increase was only 6.3%

Steph Hughes: I found out about it on a radical feminist discussion group and I cannot for the life of me remember who first brought it to everyone’s attention. So whoever that person is, thank you very much. I followed it up with the ABS and I wrote to them and said you know, like what are you guys doing to look at this astronomical increase? That can’t be right. Like, how? Like surely you’re a bit curious about this?

Stassja Frei: She also requested granulated data showing who had committed those crimes – males, females or trans identifying males and females.

Steph Hughes: And they wrote back and told me that they rely entirely upon what the states and territories give them and that they don’t have that granulated data. There’s nowhere where they keep that data or get it from states and territories. And they also provided me with a definition of sex arising from the Gillard amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act where they, you know, talk about how humans can change sex over their lifetime, which is a nonsense but it’s a nonsense because of the Gillard amendments. 

Stassja Frei: Once again, Julia Gillard’s butchering of the Sex Discrimination Act is at the heart of the problem. 

Steph Hughes: Tasmania introduced sex self ID in late 2019, but more importantly and probably more- having a more profound influence, Victoria introduced sex self ID in May 2020. So my suspicion is that self-ID has played a part in this 38% increase and it’s astounding and unbelievable to me that our national statistician isn’t even the least curious about that and pushing for a way to say ‘hey, this doesn’t look right.’ You know when you get an increase of 38% surely there should be alarm bells? You know and in good faith I wrote to them to say, you know, surely you guys think this is weird too? But there seemed to be no curiosity, no concern about how this came about. And no seeming like, motivation to look into it.

Stassja Frei: Queensland’s self-ID laws came into effect on the 24^th of June 2024. Steph has yet to request the most recent data from Corrective Services. 

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In December 2021, news.com.au published an article titled Lisa Jones sexually assaulted female stranger she followed in Melbourne. The article caught the eye of many gender critical women, including Rachael Wong. She’s the CEO of Women’s Forum Australia, which is an independent think tank focused on issues affecting women.

Rachael Wong: I think it was actually when I saw an article in, it might’ve been news.com.au which referred to a female sex attacker attacking some woman on a Melbourne street. And I was just like, ‘that doesn’t sound right.’ And I think I’d seen a few people post about it and so I read it and it turns out it wasn’t a female sex attacker, it was a male identifying as a female who had attempted to rape this woman on a Melbourne street. And anyway, that article sort of blew up all over Twitter and social media cos all these women were sort of like ‘no, this isn’t- that wasn’t one of us, this is not a female crime, this is very blatantly a male crime and it’s been reported completely falsely, completely inaccurately.’ 

Stassja Frei: The article, by journalist Caroline Schelle, reads, quote “A Melbourne woman was walking home when another woman grabbed her and told her to “lie down and have sex with me” in a shocking attack.” End quote. Not in the headline, not in the subheadline and not until the fourth paragraph of the article is it revealed that the perpetrator is a man. A transgender woman. According to the article, Lisa Jones, quote “put her hands down the woman’s pants and tried to pull down her victim’s jeans but the other woman was able to fight her off as bystanders came rushing to her aid.” End quote.

Jones pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

Eight months after that initial reporting on Lisa Jones, The Herald Sun published an article titled Prisoners fight to remove transgender inmate with history of sex offences.

Rachael Wong: It came to light through an article in the Herald Sun that the same individual, the same man, was actually being housed in the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre in Victoria and the Herald Sun article mentioned that this was the case and it also mentioned that the female prisoners in that prison were distraught, beside themselves, really upset that this man was going to be housed there, so at that stage he wasn’t actually integrated with them, and I don’t actually know if he is now either because we don’t have any contact with the female prisoners but the idea was that he would eventually be fully integrated and so these women understandably were feeling traumatised by this, were feeling frightened by this because this is a man who, who’s actually had multiple convictions for sexual offending so he attempted to rape this woman in Melbourne. He also has a history of sexually abusing his 6 year old daughter and so these women don’t want him anywhere near them which is completely understandable. 

Stassja Frei: Lisa Jones was not named in the Herald Sun article. But there were details in both the news.com.au article where he was named, and the Herald Sun article that indicate it’s the same man. Firstly, both articles state that he’s in prison for sexually assaulting a woman on a Richmond street. And secondly, both articles say that he was previously imprisoned for sexually abusing a child. News.com.au specified that he was imprisoned in Germany for this crime. While the Herald Sun were more vague, saying that he had served time in a European prison for a child sex offence. And I have to correct Rachael on one detail. She said Jones had sexually abused his 6 year old daughter, but we don’t actually know what the relationship was between Jones and the girl he abused.

So, based on these clues, we’re 99% certain that Lisa Jones was the man who female prisoners were petitioning to have removed.

According to the Herald Sun, quote “The women’s plea says they have no concerns about transgender individuals but are concerned that the inmate has a “working” penis and a history of violent sexual assault.” End quote. It sounds like their concerns have nothing to do with his gender identity, and everything to do with his biological sex.

It’s a widely acknowledged fact that many women who end up in prison have been victims of male violence. The women included this point in their petition, explaining that many of them carried significant trauma around sexual violence and this was triggered when they found out that a sexual predator was to be housed alongside them. The petition read, quote “We feel threatened, unsafe, distressed and traumatised with this current situation. Accordingly, we demand that (the inmate) be immediately removed.” End quote.

Within days of learning about the women’s petition I felt compelled to do something to support them.

Rachael Wong: So we heard of the story and then I remember you actually reached out to me and said you know, is this something that Women’s Forum would be interested in helping us to advocate on and obviously I was more than happy to do that because I love the work you’re doing with Coalition for Biological Reality and all the relationships you’ve managed to build with all these wonderful women and who are fighting in this fight.

Stassja Frei: The Coalition for Biological Reality was my attempt to bring together all the different factions that are critical of the transgender movement. From left leaning feminists, to conservative Christians and everyone in between – parents, doctors, therapists, female athletes – anyone who was concerned about the issues. At one point in time, the Facebook group I ran was probably the most active gender critical space in the whole of Australia. And I’m really pleased that a lot of important connections were made in that group. But I retired it so I could work on this podcast series.

Rachael Wong: And we had the infrastructure to be able to set up you know a campaign and some capacity to sort of really drive this issue forward. And so we set about setting up a petition on our website, and pushing that out through social media. We contacted- with yourself we contacted the Victorian Corrections Minister,

Stassja Frei: Sonya Kilkenny

Rachael Wong: the Victorian Premier

Stassja Frei: Dan Andrews

Rachael Wong: the Victorian Minister for Women

Stassja Frei: Natalie Hutchins

Rachael Wong: the Victorian Minister for Equality 

Stassja Frei: Harriet Shing

Rachael Wong: and the associate Shadow Ministers. We also contacted the Australian Human Rights Commissioner

Stassja Frei: Lorraine Finlay

Rachael Wong: the Australian Sex Discrimination Minister

Stassja Frei: Kate Jenkins – Sex Discrimination Commissioner rather than Minister

Rachael Wong: the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner

Stassja Frei: Ro Allen

Rachael Wong: The Attorney-General

Stassja Frei: Jaclyn Symes

Rachael Wong: trying to think who I’ve left out – and the Ombudsman, and multiple prison and sexual assault related organisations in Victoria. We didn’t have very favourable responses unfortunately, so basically there were multiple politicians who didn’t bother to respond at all, and the ones who did either didn’t really offer much help or they very blatantly were not willing to help. So, Harriet Shing who is the Equality Minister or who was at the time, I’m not sure about now, she basically responded to our email, I think she managed to not use the word woman once in her response from memory and basically just talked about trans people the entire time and how- and their safety and their dignity without actually responding to any of the concerns at all that we’d raised about the rights, safety and dignity of women. So that was obviously very disappointing.

Stassja Frei: At the time, I was shocked by Harriet Shing’s reply. She said, quote “I want to acknowledge the distress and fatigue the trans and gender diverse community is feeling, particularly as a result of ongoing debates about their rights. There is much work to be done to address misinformation and stigma and to support trans and gender diverse Victorians.” End quote. She did actually use the word women once in her response, but that was to refer to trans women.

Rachael Wong: Didn’t hear back from the Premier or the leader of the opposition. Some of the Shadow Ministers sort of responded and sounded like maybe they would be supportive but didn’t offer any support- actual practical support. 

Stassja Frei: An example of this came from the Shadow Minister for Women, Emma Kealy. She was and still is the Deputy Leader of the Victorian National Party who have a long standing coalition with the Liberal Party. Her assistant encouraged us to continue pursuing the matter with the relevant Victorian Government Ministers and to try and get some media attention on the issue. This gave me a chuckle when I first read it because, isn’t that her job?

There were some other notable responses.

Rachael Wong: One of the first people we heard back from was actually the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner, so Ro Allen, Ro was actually one of the first people we heard back from and….she [laughing] I had to, oh my gosh, I had to think about that, she…

Stassja Frei: Let me fill you in on the joke. Ro Allen is female but doesn’t identify as a woman. From what I can find online, I think she uses they/them pronouns. Here’s how she described herself on the program Queerstories:

Ro Allen: My name is Ro Allen. I’m gender diverse, non-binary, AFAB, trans masc, butch, monosexual. Nice to meet you.

Stassja Frei: That’s a lot of words for butch lesbian. But there’s more. In 2015 The Age newspaper ran a profile piece on Allen. Dan Andrews had just appointed her the Gender and Sexuality Commissioner of Victoria. In the article, Allen is quoted as saying the following, quote: “I identify with the concept of a walker, which is a Native American term for someone who walks between genders.” End quote. I believe the term for this is cultural appropriation.

In 2021 Ro Allen became the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner. Her office replied to our letter saying that they would raise our concerns in an upcoming meeting with Corrections Victoria.

Rachael Wong: So basically we got a response from the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission in October last year, after they’d met with Corrections and look, it was basically a very nothing response, so they sort of said, you know ‘we can’t directly comment on individual cases’, they’ve met with Corrections to discuss the relevant human rights considerations, they said that they share deeply our concerns for the safety and wellbeing of all people detained in prison, ‘all people in prisons and places of detention are entitled to have their rights protected and be treated with respect and dignity’ etc etc and then they basically say that their policy for the management of prisoners who are transgender, diverse or intersex is grounded in human rights principals that they- that Corrections Victoria is responsible for applying the policy for making decisions about the prisoner placement in Victoria and that the Commission does not have legislative power to initiate an inquiry into these decisions or direct or overturn them and that all they can really do is support the public authorities to understand their responsibilities under the human rights charter. So basically, I mean look, when I got this response I was sort of like well what was the purpose of the meeting because they basically said to us ‘oh we’re going to meet with, you know, Corrections Victoria and see what we can do and etc’ and then they basically came back and said look we’ve got no power to do anything so that was just, I mean, a waste of time for them and for us because during this period we’re obviously sort of waiting for something to happen thinking, ‘oh maybe them, Corrections are actually going to do something’ which neither of them actually ended up doing, so yeah, again, incredibly disappointing and to be honest, just quite shameful, 

Stassja Frei: In her reply, Ro Allen referred to the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act. The Act contains a section titled “Humane treatment when deprived of liberty” which states, quote “All persons deprived of liberty must be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.” End quote. Most ordinary people would consider locking women up with rapists to be inhumane. 

Rachael Wong: Then we also heard something very similar from the Australian Human Rights Commission, something about how they’ve got no power to intervene in this situation which I thought was quite interesting because here we have a State human rights body and we have a federal human rights body, we’re dealing with the breach of women’s fundamental rights and both of them are saying we have no power to intervene, so it’s like, who’s responsible for ensuring that the human rights and safety and dignity of these women are protected then? Because the government’s clearly not doing its job so who is actually meant to oversee and hold them accountable? It doesn’t seem like we’ve got anyone.

Stassja Frei: It’s been impossible to get anyone in a position of power to care about women in prison. For ordinary Australians though, learning about men in women’s prisons usually comes as quite a shock.

Rachael Wong: Yeah, I think it’s one of those issues that, honestly, every single just ordinary person that I talk to and tell about this, they’re just like, ‘what the hell!?’ Like everyone’s just absolutely bewildered and shocked that this is even happening, but the reality is not enough people know that it’s happening.

Stassja Frei: Our petition is still up on the Women’s Forum Australia website. At the time of this recording, it has just under 10,000 signatures.

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There are so many problems caused when male criminals are treated as women. I would need at least another episode to cover it all. For example, I haven’t even told you about the USA where, despite prisons handing out condoms, female inmates have been impregnated by trans identified males.

There’s also the impact on female prison officers. Transgender inmates are generally allowed to choose the sex of the person performing an intimate search on them. This totally flips the power dynamic, giving trans identified men power over female officers.

And I haven’t even covered what Janet Fraser calls Sentencing Onset Gender Dysphoria. This is a phenomenon where men suddenly declare a woman gender identity immediately after they’ve been handed a prison sentence. And then when they leave prison their gender dysphoria magically resolves and they go back to presenting as men.

The fact is there are trans identified males who are clearly vulnerable to male violence in prisons. So what’s the solution for those men? Steph Hughes from Fair Go For Queensland Women believes that men’s prisons are already capable of keeping such men safe.

Steph Hughes: Every prison has prisoners who are vulnerable either because of their stature or their age or their intellectual capacity, cognitive capacity, the crimes they’ve committed. There are vulnerable males in every male prison. And male prisons take into account those vulnerabilities and seek to protect their safety and wellbeing in the male estate. And they need to do the same for all males. Just because some males say they are transgender it does not make them women. And it does not override the overwhelming need women and girls have for safety in those vulnerable environments.

Stassja Frei: Janet Fraser, who we heard from at the start of this episode, believes major prison reform is the answer.

Janet Fraser: The current way they do it is using segregation. Segregation is complicated because it sends people insane and it is a human rights abuse to employ it beyond a very short period of time really. I think if we made our prisons more humane, that would reduce the likelihood of violence coming at gay men, at men with a trans identity and that would be better for all prisoners really. We really struggle with humane prison treatment in Australia and as a result we have these really really really high rates of recidivism. So I think if we have to keep them in the current system, unfortunately seg is it but as I’ve said I think there are lots of problems with that kind of model. I absolutely do not think they should go into women. Women are not the safe catch all for men who might be in danger from other men. Cos all men are in danger from other men in men’s prisons, like where do we draw the line with that one, right? 

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Stassja Frei: Coming up in the next episode of Desexing Society, we’ll look at how women’s crisis services have been opened up to men who say they’re women.

Jack Draper: One of the refuges down here had three townhouses. So when they had a trans person come, that trans person got given a whole town house to themselves because it wasn’t seen as safe to let the kids be near, essentially a man.

Angela Jones: And I watched the look of horror in her face when she realised that a man had heard her share in intimate detail, the story of her rape.

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Stassja Frei: Thanks for listening to Desexing Society. Written and produced by me, Stassja Frei. Thank you to my script editor, Ms Edie Wyatt, my sound technician Matthew Friend, and thank you to Janet Fraser, Steph Hughes and Rachael Wong for appearing in this episode. For more information, or to donate towards this project – which I paid for myself – please visit desexingsociety.com