Transgender rapist, Isla Bryson, to serve sentence in male prison

A transgender woman convicted of rapes carried out when she was a man will serve her prison sentence in Scotland with male inmates, officials said. 

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Thursday that Isla Bryson would not be incarcerated in a woman’s correctional facility “either short term or long term” following media reports Bryson had been transferred to the Cornton Vale women’s prison, The Guardian reported. 

The news of Bryson being in a female prison prompted outcry from lawmakers and even United Nations officials.

“This rapist decided that he was no longer a man only after appearing in court on a rape charge,” said Russell Findlay, a conservative member of Scottish Parliament. “We now have the utterly perverse situation where a Scottish court refers to someone who says he identifies as female using ‘her penis’ to rape two vulnerable women. We warned of the inevitability of this happening if the SNP’s gender self-ID law passed, but for it to have become reality is deeply worrying and an affront to the victims.”

Findlay was referring to a law passed by Scottish Parliament last month that allows people as young as 16 to seek a gender recognition certificate to confirm a change in one’s legal sex after living in their new gender for just three months — and without the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Bryson, 31, was found guilty this week of raping two women while she identified as a man previously named Adam Graham, following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow. Prosecutors successfully argued during a six-day trial that Bryson attacked one victim in 2016 and another in 2019. 

Both crimes took place in Scotland.

The defendant first appeared in court as Graham and was referred to as such in a 2020 court indictment. It was later that year, according to British press reports, that she decided to transition.