They promised this wouldn't happen: They put a violent male offender in a women's prison

For more than a year, the Minns Government repeatedly assured the people of NSW that male offenders would not be housed in women’s prisons.

Those assurances have now been exposed as false.

As revealed by The Daily Telegraph, Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) approved the transfer of a violent trans-identifying male offender who had undergone “gender reassignment surgery” into the female prison estate. The offender entered custody facing serious charges, including wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, assault and obscene exposure outside a school.

Women in prison are among the most vulnerable women in NSW. Many have histories of male violence, sexual abuse and trauma. Forcing them to live, sleep and shower alongside a male offender is an affront to their safety, privacy, dignity and human rights.

This should never have happened.

Last July, after The Daily Telegraph exposed double murderer Terry Mark Donai’s attempt to transfer to a women’s prison, Acting Premier Ryan Park declared: “It won’t be happening.”

Acting Corrections Minister Jihad Dib was equally emphatic: “There are no transgender inmates housed in a Correctional Centre of the opposite sex they were assigned at birth.”

Premier Chris Minns later said he could not envisage a “male to female” inmate ever being placed in a female prison. As recently as May, he again told the public that biological differences between males and females must be reflected in law, and that “if you’re born biologically male and you change your government certificates to be female, it will not mean that you can change from a male prison to a female prison.”

Yet one was approved for transfer the following month.

When the truth emerged, Corrections Minister Anoulack Chanthivong claimed that post-operative male inmates had been eligible for placement in women’s prisons for decades – an exception never disclosed when the Government gave its categorical assurances, or in response to Women’s Forum Australia’s repeated requests for clarification.

In July last year, I warned that the Government appeared to be whitewashing its prison policy after CSNSW officials made misleading statements about its “Classification and Placement of Transgender and Intersex Inmates”, a policy which mysteriously disappeared from public access amid scrutiny of Donai’s proposed transfer. That policy presumed placement according to gender identity unless officials decided otherwise. More than a year later, the policy remains unavailable to the public.

That secrecy is even more alarming under NSW’s new self-ID laws. More than 1,000 males have already changed the sex on their birth certificates to female, yet the Government has not explained how such an offender will be prevented from entering the female estate.

This is not transparency. It is evasion.

The timing also demands scrutiny: reportedly only hours after journalists began asking questions about the case, the offender was granted bail. By the time the story became public two days later, the only male inmate known to be housed in a NSW women’s prison was conveniently no longer there.

This transfer proves the Government’s “case-by-case” approach isn’t working – and cases across Australia show how devastating the consequences can be.

In South Australia, six female prisoners have made allegations of physical or sexual violence involving the same post-operative male prisoner, Krista Richards. In Victoria, trans-identifying male murderer Clinton Rintoull sexually assaulted a female inmate, resulting in a secret government payout. And in NSW, trans-identifying male murderer Maddison Hall was charged with raping his cellmate (the charge was later dropped after the alleged victim returned to New Zealand).

Surgery is not a safety threshold. It does not make a male offender female, erase male physical strength or eliminate male patterns of violence.

A risk assessment may determine how a male prisoner is managed, but it cannot transform him into a female prisoner. Nor should his anatomy, subjective gender identity or altered documents determine whether women retain the right to sex-segregated accommodation.

Trans-identifying male prisoners may be vulnerable in the male estate, and that should be addressed. But, as with other vulnerable men, the solution is safe, specialist accommodation within the male prison system, not transferring the risk to women who cannot leave, object or choose who shares their intimate spaces.

Female prisoners retain human rights even after conviction. Their punishment is loss of liberty – not the loss of their safety, privacy and dignity by being forced to live alongside male offenders. International human rights standards require male and female prisoners to be held separately, a fundamental safeguard the NSW Government has abandoned.

The Government must publish its current policy, explain how this transfer was approved and disclose how many other male prisoners are being considered for placement with women.

Most importantly, it must adopt one clear, enforceable rule: women’s prisons are for female prisoners only, irrespective of gender identity, hormones, surgery or legal sex.

We should not have to wait for another woman to be assaulted before the Government acts.

Rachael Wong is the CEO of Women’s Forum Australia