Cruel and unusual punishment…

A mother-of-four claims she pleaded guilty to a crime she didn’t commit to avoid returning to a prison that housed two [male] trans inmates locked up for murder and sex assault, MailOnline can reveal.

Amanda Benson, 42, from Inverkip, Scotland, was imprisoned on remand at HMP Greenock with the two trans women – murderer Alex Stewart, 34, and sexual assaulter Laura Miller, 30.

They haven’t had any surgeries or “gender-affirming” hormones, she says.

Stewart – previously known as Alan Baker – was jailed for 19 years for stabbing father-of-two John Weir, 36, to death after they met on a dating site. The trans prisoner reportedly started dating a female child killer in HMP Greenock in 2020. 

Miller was jailed for almost two years in 2022 after she sexually assaulted a woman who had taken sleeping medication on multiple occasions in 2017 and even filmed one of the attacks, in which she made an offensive sexual remark about her.

…

‘It’s terrifying to be in there with them so [I did anything] to get out of there. I felt the threat that I could have been raped by these men and that could have led to me falling pregnant.

‘They were both quite tall. One was very heavy. He dressed like a man. The other guy tried to wear sparkly jeans. Neither had had any surgery. They just said they were women and wanted to be in a women’s prison. We can’t leave. We are locked up with them, no matter what.’

Cruel enough?

The cells at Greenock Prison don’t have showers in them, meaning women have to use communal showers.  

Rhona Hotchkiss, who was Governor of HMP Greenock until 2019, said: ‘We had three or four trans women in at once. It was a horrific situation. None of them had identified as trans before they came into prison. The behaviour was appalling. They were clearly, most of them, there for sexual reasons.’

She added: ‘Male staff are not allowed to go anywhere near those showers but trans women can.’

Despite the appalling behavior.