Until 2019, not a single woman had ever been imprisoned for a sex crime against an adult. Since then, Irish prisons have experienced a sudden influx of ‘female’ sex offenders – according to official records. As you will have guessed, the perpetrators are in fact male. The first, whose name is not public, was convicted in July 2019 on ten counts of sexual assault, and one of cruelty to a child. This person has changed legal sex but undergone no surgical or hormonal transition – in other words, is a physiologically normal male. The sentence is being served in a women’s prison, where the prisoner
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