Aontú Leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has submitted a Bill to the Dáil that if passed would prevent male born criminals being placed into Women’s Prisons. The Bill has been developed in consultation with the Women’s Rights organisation ‘The Countess’. Speaking in advance of a Press Conference next Tuesday on the submission of the Bill An Teachta Tóibín stated:
“We believe in a compassionate pluralist Republic. All citizens are equal and valued no matter what their identity, ethnicity, religion, orientation. Everyone should be treated on the basis of their own individual character. Gender dysphoria is real and is not easy for anyone. But the limits of the rights of one citizen is where they negatively impact on the rights of another. A consequence, unforeseen by many, of the Gender Recognition Act was to allow male born criminals to be placed in women’s prisons. This has led to an incredible situation where male born prisoners who have been jailed for horrific sexual offences are now located in women’s prisons”.
“Barbie Kardashian was found guilty of threatening to kill, rape and torture his mother. Kardashian was granted a gender recognition certificate by the Department of Social Protection and as a result has been placed in a women’s prison. In the system that the government has created there is no gate keeper at all in terms of who can be put into a women’s prison. Any man can be placed in a women’s prison if he wishes. This is a horrendous dereliction of duty by this government in terms of the protection of women. Women are entitled to safe spaces and its clear that the law needs to be changed. The Taoiseach himself, Leo Varadkar has said that biological males should not be put in women’s prisons. Indeed opinion polls have also indicated that the majority of people oppose locating biological males in women’s prisons”.
“The Aontú Bill seeks to remove the threat of sexual assault or abuse by male born prisons in female prisons by making provision for single-sex accommodation in prisons. Our Bill provides that a gender recognition certificate does not affect whether a person is deemed male or female for the purpose of applying the existing rule as to single-sex accommodation in prisons”.
Laoise de Brún BL the founder and CEO of The Countess issued the following statement;
“No man should ever be housed in female prison regardless of how they identify. Men and women have been housed in separate prisons since the Gaol Act of 1823. One of the many unintended consequences of the Gender Recognition Act 2015 has been a reversal of this 200 year old policy which was brought about by reformers like Elizabeth Fry to protect female prisoners from male prisoners”.
We thank Aontú for having the courage to dissent from trans orthodoxy in order to advocate for the women who are the most vulnerable in society, those kept in the care and custody of the state, 95% of whom are non-violent. The Countess has long viewed the granting of a gender recognition certificate as an access-all-area pass for predators, chancers, transgressors and cheats and nowhere are the consequences felt more viscerally than in prisons. In the Irish prison system and in all prison systems beholden to gender self-ID, the data is the same and irrefutable. Either trans identified male prisoners are more likely to be sex offenders than other male prisoners OR sexual predators are using this loophole to get sent to female prison. It must one of these two things. And this loophole must be closed”.
De Brún further stated;
“The recent British policy change triggered by the public outcry that ensued when a male rapist was housed in a female prison in Scotland is predicated on their having no legal requirement to house trans identified men in female prison. That is not the case in this jurisdiction where we have full, unfettered self-ID and a legal requirement to treat all men who acquire gender recognition certificates, as though they were women. The only solution is to limit the scope of the gender recognition certificate, which is what we have done in my drafting of this amendment. It behoves legislators to vote to close the gaps that are now obvious to all reasonable people and to amend the GRA to exclude prisons from the scope.
ENDS
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