The transgender rapist who changed gender from male to female before the trial deliberately ‘gamed the system’ to avoid being sent to a men’s prison in Scotland, it was claimed yesterday.
Isla Bryson is with a Mike Tyson-style face tattoo when carrying out the violent sex attacks in 2016 and 2019 after meeting the victims online.
But after being charged with two rapes, Bryson appeared in the dock at Glasgow High Court as a woman despite not fully transitioning and still having a penis. After less than a day of deliberation, a jury found the 31-year-old guilty of both rape charges.
Police Scotland yesterday told MailOnline that Isla Bryson’s rapes would be recorded as offences perpetrated by a man – even though the sex attacker has been sent to Scotland’s only female prison.
And there was more confusion because the force initially declined to comment on the issue, referring MailOnline to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Government around four hours after receiving the request.
The First Minister of Scotland told the BBC there was no automatic right for trans women to be sent to a women’s prison if found guilty of a crime.
Speaking to the PM programme on BBC Radio 4, Ms Sturgeon said it would be wrong to comment on the case directly but transitioning did not guarantee a criminal a place in a women’s prison.
‘The fact of the matter is there is no automatic right for a trans woman convicted of an offense to go to a women’s prison,’ she said.
A spokesman said: ‘The accused was arrested and charged in 2019 as a man and was recorded as such’.
Feminist SNP MSP Joanna Cherry for Edinburgh South West, who is also a barrister, slammed the decision to send the sex attacker to Cornton Vale jail in Stirling – an all-female prison, declaring: ‘Under Scots law, the crime of rape can only be committed by somebody with a penis, and that’s a man.
‘And I think we should call out what’s happened here. I’m very concerned about the safety of women prisoners, with whom a convicted rapist has been placed’.
She told Times Radio: ‘To many people, it will look like this convicted rapist has gamed the system in order to try and garner sympathy, and to end up in a women’s prison.
‘And I think a lot of people will be shocked by that. So I think we should be talking about these cases…And women in prison are very vulnerable.
‘Many women in prison have themselves been abused, and have suffered injuries over the years. And so they’re particularly vulnerable.
‘And perhaps some people would say nobody really cares about prisoners. But the point about human rights is that they’re universal, and they apply to everyone’.
The hashtag #NotOurCrimes is trending on Twitter today as woman protested the decision.
One said: ‘Always a man. Always. Look at him. And he’s being held in a women’s prison. How dare you disrespect women this way?’
Another tweeted Nicola Sturgeon: ‘This is a MAN. He is a RAPIST. No woman should have to be locked up with him’.
On social media one woman said: ‘Male when he committed the crimes, male when he was in court and male now he’s locked up in a female prison. Stop gaslighting us’.
All eyes on Nicola Sturgeon with the case reigniting public debate over her controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would allow anyone over the age of 16 to ‘self-identify’ as the opposite sex against the need for medical evidence or diagnosis.
