A trans-identified male serving an indefinite prison sentence for sexual offenses, including the rape of a 13 year-old girl, is said to have sexually assaulted multiple female inmates after having been transferred into a women’s prison.
According to reports from women detained at Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI) in Ontario, Carissa Marie Radcliffe, previously known as Frederick Radcliffe, has forcefully sexually attacked multiple women, spurring an ongoing investigation which began with his relocation to a maximum security unit on October 4. To date, two women have filed official reports with the Correctional Service of Canada.
Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI), located in Kitchener, is organized into a campus-style setting with several buildings, or “houses,” where inmates live together. Radcliffe, a convicted pedophile who claims to identify as a transgender woman, was transferred into a housing unit at GVI at the beginning of 2023.
Radcliffe has a lengthy criminal history and has been convicted of the rape of teenage girls on several occasions. He was declared a Dangerous Offender in 2010, a designation which requires him to remain incarcerated until the parole board says he is no longer a risk to the public.
In 2017, Radcliffe, still using 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.
Speaking with Reduxx on the case, female inmate advocate Heather Mason revealed that the victim’s roommate was a firsthand witness to Radcliffe’s sexual abuse of the victim.
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 (SIS), 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.
Leading up to the sexual assault, the victim, Maria, who name has been altered for safeguarding reasons, told Mason that his behavior had been “predatory”, causing her to live in fear. In addition to a slew of sexual remarks, Maria said that Radcliffe had told her she was “younger than [his] last victim.”
The witness, who Reduxx will refer to as Emma to protect her identity, had previously been sexually assaulted by another trans-identified male inmate, Steven “Sam” Mehlenbacher in 2020.
Mehlenbacher was being held in the Edmonton Institution for Women (EIW), but after sexually assaulting a female inmate there in 2019, was transferred to GVI, where he sexually abused Emma.
“Why has the Correctional Service of Canada placed me in this housing situation with Radcliffe, knowing how vulnerable I am as a survivor of sexual abuse that already occurred here in GVI?” asked Maria.
“Why don’t my rights matter? Why doesn’t the CSC care about the trauma I’ve gone through, and why have they put me in a situation where I could become a victim again?”
But Maria was not the only woman at GVI who was assaulted by Radcliffe. Multiple other victims have filed a report with prison authorities.
Once officials became aware of the sexual assaults, Radcliffe was removed from House 11 and placed in a maximum security unit. Officers then began to interview all of the women who had been living in the same house, inquiring as to Radcliffe’s behavior. Some women noted that he had been walking around the housing unit while wearing only a shirt, naked from the waist down and exposing himself to the women.
“CSC is aware that [Radcliffe] has sexually assaulted women on compound and are pulling them all in to be interviewed,” Mason told Reduxx.
Mason told Reduxx that another woman has come forward with a “distressing account” of Radcliffe sexually abusing her in a similar manner. According to Mason, the victim said that Radcliffe pushed her against a wall in an area near the library’s bathroom, and forcefully shoved his hands down her pants before engaging in unwanted sexual contact.
Radcliffe had only been staying in House 11 for two weeks before he assaulted Maria, and Mason emphasizes that he was “predatory right from the start.” The dangerous sex offender had previously been living in a housing unit for Indigenous women, but was transferred to House 11 due to his ongoing sexual harassment of the women there.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Radcliffe has an extensive criminal history dating back decades. Though he has been convicted of non-violent crimes such as theft, criminal harassment, and criminal misconduct, the majority of his crimes were distinctly sexual and involved underage girls.
From 1989 to 1990, he was convicted for multiple indecent acts that involved exposing his penis to female victims while masturbating. One of the victims was 15 years old.
In 1991, he was convicted of sexual assault on a 19-year-old female victim, followed by a conviction for three counts of sexual interference and one count of sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl the following year.
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.
According to a 2010 report from North Bay Nugget, one woman who dated Radcliffe while unaware of his sex offending testified in court that he had a foot fetish and asked her to call him “Daddy’s little whore”.
On one occasion, he drove her to a construction site and forced himself on her. On other occasions, he forced her to dress up like a schoolgirl. “I believe he will continue to harm younger women around us,” she told the court.
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.
Radcliffe appealed his conviction and indeterminate sentence in 2017, but his request was denied by the court. It was around that time that he began claiming to be transgender and changed his name to Carissa Marie.
Radcliffe is one of multiple dangerous sex offenders serving an indeterminate sentence who has been transferred into a women’s institution on the basis of his “gender identity”.
Adam Laboucan, who sexually assaulted a three-month-old baby boy in Quesnel, British Columbia, was relocated to Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford after he began calling himself Tara Desousa. Due to the horrific nature of the crime, Laboucan was handed the rare indeterminate prison sentence in 1999 at the age of 17, and was declared the nation’s youngest criminally violent sex offender.
Inmates at FVI confirmed to Reduxx last year that Laboucan had been housed in a unit next to the Mother-Child Program residence, and said that he had been “staring” at the children to “antagonize” the women. Last fall, an eyewitness came forward to reveal that Laboucan had brutally assaulted a female inmate after she called him a “pedophile.”
Additionally, convicted serial pedophile Madilyn Harks, whose given name is Matthew, was also relocated to FVI for a time and was said to be behaving similarly to Leboucan – leering at the infants and making “inappropriate antagonizing comments”. Harks has been described as having “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.
A report released by the Canadian Correctional Service in 2022 revealed that 82% of “gender diverse” prisoners with a history of sexual offending were men who identified as “trans women.” Almost all (94%) had committed their offenses while “living as their biological sex.”
The majority (85%) committed offenses that caused death or serious harm to their victim(s) while 70% inflicted psychological harm on their victim(s). Over half of the victims were children (58%) or female (55%), and one-third of the sexual predators had multiple victims.
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