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SCARLET HOWES FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 17:07 EST, 15 January 2022 | UPDATED: 18:29 EST, 15 January 2022
A female prisoner has described her ordeal at the hands of a
transgender woman who sexually molested inmates at a women's jail during a three-month reign of terror.
Waiving her anonymity in an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Cheryle Kempton is the first victim to speak out in the hope that it prevents other women facing a similar fate.
And in a shocking account, Cheryle, 45, reveals she was one of four victims of sex predator Karen White, who was sent to the jail despite having had neither surgery nor hormone treatment.
Waiving her anonymity in an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Cheryle Kempton is the first victim to speak out in the hope that it prevents other women facing a similar fate
White, 56, was sent to HMP New Hall, which houses 360 women, despite being a convicted paedophile on remand for grievous bodily harm, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women.
Last night, Cheryle told the MoS: 'This must never be allowed to happen again. Whatever people have done, prison should be a safe space.'
She believes White – who was born Stephen Wood – faked being transgender for the sole purpose of preying on vulnerable women and took advantage of new legislation which allows men who live as women to serve time at female prisons.
'She would get special privileges to buy make-up on certain sites like Asos and she was allowed to use the internet to buy her wigs,' said Cheryle. 'We were never allowed to do that, so why was she?'
Under new guidance, judges must now consider forcing alleged victims of sexual offences to refer to transgender defendants by the gender they wish – as well as keeping their previous names a secret.
Decisions on where to place inmates such as White are initially taken by a local transgender case board made up of prison managers and psychologists. In this case, White's previous crimes were not taken into account.
Cheryle says she will never forget the balmy September afternoon in 2017 when White strolled across the exercise yard at the jail near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and asked if she could borrow some oil for her e-cigarette.
None of the women were warned that White was a man identifying as a woman. At least 6ft tall, she towered over her fellow inmates who asked why she was wearing a long blonde cheap wig and 'frumpy' clothes. White refused to engage, simply replying: 'I'm a woman.'
White, 56, was sent to HMP New Hall, which houses 360 women, despite being a convicted paedophile on remand for grievous bodily harm, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women
Cheryle said: 'She would always come in with full make-up but couldn't do her foundation properly. We were all a little shocked about how big she was. I gave her the vape oil and we had a five-minute chat about what she was in for. She didn't want to fit in, it was just a costume, an act. She also didn't speak like a woman. Her voice was really, really deep and blokey. If you wanted to be a woman you would try to make your voice softer, but she didn't care.'
At the time, Cheryle – who became trapped in a cycle of offending because of drug addiction – was almost halfway through a sentence for burglary.
After their first encounter, she was given the task of mentoring White in the sewing workshop.
At first the pair struck up a friendship, but within three days, while left alone in the workshop, White coarsely demanded that mother-of-two Cheryle perform a sex act.
'I just said, 'I thought you were a woman', to which she replied, 'Yes, but I still have a penis',' recalled Cheryle. 'She then told me that it would work if she didn't take her [hormone] tablets for six weeks.'
White then bragged she was hiding the medication between her gum and lip to give the illusion she was taking it. The sex offender is believed to have been on hormone therapy which would lower her testosterone and her sex drive, making it almost impossible for her to get aroused. If the medication is stopped, however, the body will start to naturally produce it again.
White then brazenly reached over and groped Cheryle's left breast, before suggesting she'd had breast implants.
'It was disgusting. I was wearing a padded bra and she wanted to feel it,' said Cheryle. 'She squeezed it hard, with the words, 'Oh look, they are not real ones'. I told her to get off me.'
Cheryle says she was asked by a prison officer to make a formal complaint about White, but to her regret declined. 'At that point I didn't really think much of it,' she said. 'I thought I was safe and she was just trying her luck. I didn't look at her at that point and think, 'Is she here to prey on women?' '
However, Cheryle was left in no doubt about White's intentions a fortnight later when she pressed herself up against her while queuing for the workshop toilet.
White was hastily moved to HMP Armley, an all-male prison in Leeds, while police investigated. Not everyone at New Hall jail knew White had been born male, which sparked uproar among inmates as word spread
'She pushed herself up behind me and I could feel that she was aroused,' said Cheryle. 'I went mad. She was whispering, 'You know you want it.' '
Next day, White grabbed Cheryle's hand and put it on her crotch. 'She grabbed my arm so hard, without saying a word. I froze as I was in shock but then I lost it with anger and picked up a pair of scissors.
'I had to be dragged out and she was denying it. For that split second she had power over me and I'm furious at myself for allowing that as I'm not that kind of person. I just thought, 'You vile monster.' '
Soon afterwards Cheryle discovered that White had sexually assaulted another inmate.
'Karen had tried to force herself on an inmate she had become friendly with, and another prisoner had walked in and witnessed it and managed to pull her off,' she recalled.
'They started a friendship and she [the victim] thought there were real feelings as she was vulnerable. She told me she thought Karen was nice. When you're being groomed like that you don't think you're being abused.
'Karen pulled her in by buying her stuff. She knew exactly what she was doing. That's when Karen was put in isolation.'
It was at this point that Cheryle decided to make a formal complaint and she discovered that others had endured similar experiences.
White was hastily moved to HMP Armley, an all-male prison in Leeds, while police investigated.
Not everyone at New Hall jail knew White had been born male, which sparked uproar among inmates as word spread.
'We felt they had protected Karen over us,' said Cheryle. 'All women in prison are vulnerable.'
White made even the most hardened criminals uncomfortable with her sexual innuendos, which was at first dressed up as 'bantering'.
'All her conversations were about sex,' recalled Cheryle. 'I felt vulnerable and uncomfortable in her presence. And we all felt like that, even the toughest of us.
'She had a manly body. It's just human nature that men are stronger than us. And we all knew Karen was stronger than us. If she got hold of us she would overpower us.'
White was at least required to shower alone. She also had a single cell and wasn't allowed to share.
A rhyme soon emerged among the inmates: 'Watch out for White, she'll give you a fright.'
But, for Cheryle, that rhyme made light of an appalling situation. She said: 'Karen White faked being transgender to abuse women and the authorities enabled her to assault and prey on us.'
Cheryle's statements formed part of the Crown Prosecution Service's case against White, which saw her admit two sexual assaults on female prisoners at Leeds Crown Court in October 2018.
A judge, who described White as a 'predator', ordered the remaining two charges, including the assault on Cheryle, to lie on file. White was also convicted of raping another two women outside of jail, as well as wounding.
Prosecutor Chris Dunn described him as 'an alleged transgender female' who used her 'transgender person to put herself in contact with vulnerable persons' whom she could then abuse. The Ministry of Justice apologised for moving White to New Hall, saying that her previous offending history had not been taken into account.
Despite the scandal, revisions have recently been made to the 'equal treatment benchbook', an official 540-page guide for judges, providing instructions to refer to rapists by the gender they have chosen for themselves.
Cheryle said: 'They don't care about the victims. Shouldn't they be the ones that have the say of what their attacker is called? If the person is able to penetrate you, then they are a man.'
White, from Manchester is now serving a life sentence in HMP Wakefield, which houses 750 of Britain's most dangerous men.
MARY HARRINGTON: How could the Lords vote to let trans women into female prisons after this fiasco?
By Mary Harrington for the Mail on Sunday
Should male criminals ever be incarcerated with women? You might think that this is a mad question, with an obvious answer: of course not.
Or that the appalling crimes committed by Karen White, a 52-year-old male jailed for rape, sexual assault and wounding, then placed in a women’s prison, would make that all too clear.
But to many of our Moral Betters, the answer to the question is: yes. By all means imprison a man with women if, like Karen White, that male criminal identifies as female.
Former Home Office Minister Baron Blencathra has recently tried to stand up to this madness with an amendment to the Police,
Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. He wants prisoners to be incarcerated according to their sex at birth.
A key principle is at stake here. Baron Blencathra argues that women have a right to some spaces free of men and that prisons ought to be the ‘definitive example’ of such a space.
Yet today, jails are not safe for women.
As Blencathra puts it, when women are jailed, their ‘punishment should not include the threat of rape and violence from big, brute rapists who have decided to identify as women and get sent to a women’s unit’.
He has a point. Blencathra proposed that transgender inmates could be housed in specialist units. You might think this a reasonable compromise. But in November, the House of Lords disagreed – with a majority of their Lordships voting in favour of some males having access to women’s prisons.
How did we get to this surreal place? In 2015, Tara Hudson, who was born a man but transitioned to live as a woman, sued the Government after being imprisoned in the all-male HMP Bristol.
Hudson’s activist supporters claimed that such transgender individuals were at risk of violence and abuse in male prisons, and Hudson was moved to a women’s facility.
In 2017, prison policy changed again. Instead of demanding medical certification of trans identity, guidance emphasised the right of prisoners to ‘self-identify’ and to be treated ‘according to the gender in which they identify’.
The truth is, however, that there are stark differences between the way that men and women break the law.
True, there are notorious female criminals. But most crimes committed by women are minor, such as TV licence fee evasion. Around 96 per cent of the UK prison population is male. Most murderers and violent offenders are male: 93 per cent of killers convicted between 2018 and 2020.
Men account for 98 per cent of all reported UK rape and sexual assault. On average men are much more violent than women. And they’re much more sexually aggressive. And there’s no evidence that identifying as a woman makes any difference.
Studies suggest when transgender women commit crimes, those crimes follow the male pattern – not the female one.
Despite this, when prison policy was altered to accommodate transgender inmates, little effort was made to consider any possible impact on female prisoners.
And there was an impact.
The policy has failed in the case of White. It’s failed in other cases where transgender inmates have sexually assaulted female fellow inmates.
It has been said that the Prison Service has ‘learned the lessons’ of the Karen White fiasco. Risk assessment, we are told, is now so solid that women’s prisons can be made effectively unisex, without any increased danger to women.
However, women locked in a mixed-sex prison might still live in a climate of fear even if they are not physically assaulted.
A study of Scottish prisons reported ‘fears among female inmates of predatory behaviour by some trans prisoners’.
One inmate said a transgender fellow prisoner had spoken of wanting ‘to have sex with loads of lassies’.
It’s not a stretch to think that someone who violates social norms badly enough to end up in prison could also be the kind of person who takes sexual advantage of vulnerable women.
Or the kind of person to abuse the system cynically, without a sincere wish to transition, in search of a cushier sentence in a less violent women’s facility.
The same Scottish report also revealed that some transgender prisoners had identified as women when being sentenced in court, only to revert to their ‘birth gender’ after release from jail.
Anyone with a basic grasp of human nature and of the observable differences between men and women could have seen this fiasco coming. Yet the idealists who rejected Blencathra’s sensible amendment just stuck their fingers in their ears.
No one disputes that we should take individual circumstances into account. But when it comes to prisons, women’s safety and dignity depends on acknowledging what’s clear to see: that sometimes the difference that matters is between the sexes rather than how someone self-identifies.
Meanwhile, our Moral Betters continue living in a dream-world, rolling out heaven on earth, over the bodies of real-world women.
Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at online magazine UnHerd.
