A dangerous male offender serving time for sexual violence against a minor has been transferred to a women’s prison after identifying as transgender.
Carissa Marie Radcliffe, previously known as Frederick Radcliffe, was transferred from the Bath Institution, a federal institution which houses male inmates, to the Grand Valley Institution for Women approximately two months ago.
Heather Mason, a Canadian advocate for incarcerated women, first called attention to the transfer on March 7 and provided Reduxx details on his offenses.
Court records show that Radcliffe has an extensive criminal history dating back decades. While Radcliffe has been convicted of non-violent crimes such as theft, criminal harassment, and criminal misconduct, the majority of his crimes were distinctly sexual.
From 1989 to 1990, he was convicted for multiple indecent acts that involved exposing his penis to female victims while masturbating. One victim was 15 years old.
The next year, he was convicted of sexual assault on a 19-year-old female victim, followed by a 1992 conviction for three counts of sexual interference and one count of sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl.
Radcliffe received another charge for indecent exposure in 1993 and two more indecent exposure convictions in 1998. During the second incident in 1998, he followed his 17-year-old female victim to her vehicle after exposing himself.
In 2009, Radcliffe was found guilty of sexual assault on a person under the age of fourteen. The assault occurred in Ottawa in 2007, when Radcliffe was 34-years-old. He was married with one child at the time.
The victim was a particularly vulnerable young girl with a history of social and parental problems. According to court records, Radcliffe had met the victim at a Tim Hortons parking lot where the girl would occasionally hang out. He bought the girl a chocolate milk and agreed to drive her home, but instead made a detour and pulled behind a gas station where he demanded sex from her.
The girl is quoted as having said to him: “Don’t fucking touch me, man, you know. Like, I don’t want to do this.” She told the court that Radcliffe pushed her down on the back seat of his truck, and ignored her pleas for him to stop and take her home to her parents. Radcliffe covered the girl’s mouth at one point and prevented her from screaming as he penetrated her both vaginally and anally.
The girl stated she was bleeding after the assault, and was in so much pain following the ordeal that she could not walk for approximately half an hour.
During direct examination, Radcliffe stated that he had experienced “sexual problems” since the time he was a teenager, for which he had received treatment and counseling. He was prescribed erectile dysfunction drugs in 2007 after his sex life “deteriorated,” but he stopped purchasing the prescriptions later that year.
In 2010, Radcliffe was declared a dangerous offender and sentenced to an indeterminate time behind bars, until the parole board assesses that he is no longer an undue risk to society.
According to court records, Radcliffe will be placed on the sex offender register and banned from public parks and public swimming areas where persons under the age of 14 may be present for at least 10 years after his release.
In 2017, Radcliffe, still under the name Frederick, appealed his 2009 conviction and his 2010 indeterminate sentence. The judge dismissed both appeals. It was around this time that Radcliffe began identifying as “transgender” and changed his name and pronouns.
No existing court records provide any information indicating Radcliffe had previously experienced gender identity issues, and all historical media coverage of his crimes refer to him as a male. Despite this, Radcliffe has reportedly undergone a vaginoplasty and was transferred to the Grand Valley Institution (GVI) for Women within the last two months.
Speaking to Reduxx, Heather Mason said that the Correctional Service Canada “wouldn’t let [Radcliffe] transfer until he had surgery. So he has had surgery and is now at GVI.”
Mason is a former federal inmate herself, but since her release she has become a strong voice for incarcerated women’s rights in Canada. Mason is a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights, a non-partisan coalition of women working to advocate for single-sex spaces and sex-based rights. She also sits on the board of directors for Strength in SISterhood, a group of women who have survived prison and are working to end female incarceration. Mason has been a vocal advocate against the transfer of men to women’s institutions.
Mason tells Reduxx that Radcliffe still “looks like a man” to the female inmates, and expresses concern over the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) strategies.
“So what it seems like CSC is doing is that they are castrating all the pedophiles and rapists and sending them to women’s prisons,” she says.
Canada has long had a policy of housing federal prisoners based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex, though all known transfer requests have been from males. Prior to 2017, male inmates who sought transfer had to undergo “sex reassignment surgery” before a transfer would be approved, but that prerequisite has since been dropped after a promise was made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
During a town hall in Kingston, Ontario, on January 12, 2017, a trans-identified male named Teresa Windsor asked Trudeau: “Will you do your best to ensure that trans women are put in a prison more appropriate to their gender identity?”
Trudeau responded: “I will make sure we look at it and we address it and we do right in recognizing that trans rights are human rights and we need to make sure we are defending everyone’s dignity and rights in every way we can.”
The very next day, Correctional Service Canada released new guidelines for housing prisoners based on gender identity rather than anatomy.
Reduxx has previously reported on the case of Adam Laboucan, who is serving an indeterminate sentence for the horrific rape of a 3-month-old infant boy in 1997. Laboucan is housed at Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, which has a mother-baby unit. Female inmates have revealed that he is frequently seen looming around the mothers and their babies, and that he attacked an inmate who confronted him about it.
Matthew Harks, another male pedophile, is also at GVI. Harks is described as having an “all-encompassing preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls.” Authorities believe he targeted at least 60 victims before being charged for approximately 200 offenses related to sexual abuse.
Research from Correctional Service Canada indicates that male offenders who identify as “trans-women” have disproportionately high rates of sexual offending. Most caused “death or serious harm” to victims that were more likely to be children or female. Most “gender diverse” sex offenders also inflicted “psychological harm,” and nearly half received indeterminate sentences like Radcliffe and Laboucan.
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