A female correctional officer in Canada has won an employment tribunal case after she suffered a mental health injury while being assigned to monitor a trans-identified male inmate who had been transferred to a women’s prison.
According to a court ruling filed on October 3, the female correctional officer will be entitled to workers compensation benefits after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) she had acquired while being forced to monitor a trans-identified male inmate for 12 hours without relief despite her increasing anxiety.
The plaintiff, a 55-year-old woman who had been working in corrections for 11 years, had been assigned to monitor the inmate after he had been placed on suicide watch in December of 2019. The officer immediately made her employer aware that she had mental health concerns due to childhood sexual trauma, making the task difficult for her.
She testified that on December 16, 2019, she had been sent to the maximum security wing of the institution she was employed at and told to take over the monitoring of a trans-identified male inmate while he was on suicide watch. The assignment required her to unwaveringly monitor a video stream from inside the inmate’s cell.
According to the court records, she was made to sit in a small, dark office by herself and record what was happening in the cell every 15 minutes, including when the inmate went to the bathroom and masturbated.
While the identity of the prisoner is unknown, the court documents state he had been incarcerated in a men’s institution for “years” prior to claiming to be transgender and receiving a transfer to a women’s prison.
The officer repeatedly requested she be relieved of this duty, and advised her managers that she felt a male officer should have been responsible for the task considering the inmate was fully intact, but her requests were denied and she was told she had to remain at her post.
Throughout her shift, the officer became increasingly anxious, and ultimately divulged that she had survived child sexual abuse to her supervisor. But her boss threatened her with disciplinary action or termination if she did not complete the task assigned to her.
While she was originally scheduled to work from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., management was unable to find a female officer willing or able to assume her post at the time she was supposed to leave, resulting in the worker having to remain at the station until 2 a.m. During the course of the 12-hour shift, she had also been denied a proper break or bathroom time, as no one was able to assume her post.
The day after her shift, the officer sought mental health assistance. She was given a note by her doctor to remain off work until January 3, and was ultimately diagnosed with PTSD within that timeframe.
According to the ruling: “The worker testified about the impact on her life since the incident. She testified that she could not return to work and was constantly reliving her childhood abuse. She felt re-traumatized and unheard by the employer when she tried to reach out. She felt like she had no options to get out of the assignment and felt numb. She testified that it was devastating.”
Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) initially denied the worker’s claim for PTSD benefits, claiming it fell under certain exemptions in WSIB’s Traumatic Mental Stress, Chronic Mental Stress, and First Responders policies.
But the Workplace Safety and Appeals Tribunal ultimately ruled in favor of the female officer, finding that being forced to monitor the male inmate for an extended period of time without break “triggered memories and a reliving of childhood trauma,” and ultimately caused the worker’s PTSD. She is now entitled to workplace benefits for the trauma she suffered while employed at the institution.
As of December 2017, inmates in Canada who claim a “transgender” identity can be housed in the facility of their preference regardless of physical anatomy unless “there are overriding health or safety concerns which cannot be resolved.”
While it is unknown what institution the female correctional officer was employed at, details from the court document suggest it may have been a federal facility due to the length of sentence the male inmate was serving. In Canada, inmates sentenced to prison terms in excess of 2 years are under the jurisdiction of the Correctional Services of Canada, which operates only one facility for incarnated women in Ontario — The Grand Valley Institution for Women.
The facility has had multiple controversies surrounding the transfer of trans-identified male inmates in recent years.
In September, female inmates at Grand Valley Institution reported that a violent male necrophiliac had been transferred to the facility after beginning to identify as transgender. Catherine Lynn was incarcerated for the 1995 murder of a woman. Lynn stabbed the victim to death before raping her corpse.
Heather Mason, a former federal inmate who served her time at the Grand Valley Institution, has been on the front-lines of providing information to the public on the necessity of keeping prisons in Canada single-sex.
Mason, now a vocal women’s rights campaigner, reported last year that 50% of male inmates seeking transfer to women’s prisons in Canada had been convicted of sex offenses.
50% of the transfer requests are from sex offenders.
— Heather Mason 🇨🇦 (@Mason134211f) March 17, 2021
Lots of murderers & violent offenders transferred
Steve Mehlenbacher was a 3rd-time federal offender w 16 bank heists & is on sexual assault & criminal harassment charges
Harks was a prolific serial pedophile. pic.twitter.com/z49uaxw3yE
The data is consistent with findings from other nations.
In the United States, it was found that almost 50% of male Bureau of Prison inmates who identified as transgender had been convicted of sex offenses. In the United Kingdom, 60% of all trans-identified male inmates with legal gender change documents have at least one conviction for a sexual offense.
Prison self-identification policies in other countries have also resulted in the sexual harassment and even rape of incarcerated women by male inmates who are transferred to women’s prisons.
Earlier this year, a trans-identified male inmate at Rikers Island was convicted of raping an incarcerated woman while in the female facility of the New York City prison complex. Weeks later, Reduxx exclusively revealed that a trans-identified male inmate reportedly sexually assaulted a female in a California institution.
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