A number of trans-identified male prisoners who have been locked up across Germany have repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed female inmates and correctional officers, according to a new survey by Die Welt. The survey, conducted in the 16 state justice ministries across the country, confirmed a number of incidents involving trans-identified male inmates who had been housed in women’s prisons.
In Vechta, a women’s prison in Lower Saxony, three sexual assaults were reported to have taken place by the same transgender perpetrator between 2023 and 2024. While the trans-identified male was not identified, it is known he had been convicted of the possession of child sexual abuse material. In North-Rhine Westphalia, another trans-identified male was involved in a physical assault on a female inmate.
One of the most egregious incidents that the survey learned of had first come to public attention in December of last year, when the Saxony state government finally admitted that throughout 2023 and early 2024, a trans-identified inmate had repeatedly ambushed and stalked multiple female inmates in the Chemnitz correctional facility, demanding sex and threatening to beat them if they didn’t comply. The man also repeatedly forced both female inmates and female correctional officers to watch him masturbate. According to the Freie Presse, the male inmate was eventually transferred back to a men’s prison.
Despite the Chemnitz incident being first reported in January of last year, the Saxony government only confirmed it following an initiative from Lasst Frauen Sprechen (Let Women Speak) seeking the figures on how many male sex offenders were being housed with women. A subsequent information request from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) sought data on the number of people with “deviating gender identities” that had been in the state prison system since January of 2020. Prior to this latest survey from Die Welt, all 16 state justice ministries denied that any incidents had taken place as a result of housing trans-identified males in women’s prisons.
Speaking to Reduxx in December, Hanna-Katarina Zippel of Lasst Frauen Sprechen said that she was “shocked” that men had been moved into female prisons before Germany’s radical Self-Determination Act had officially come into force in November. The law streamlined the process for an individual to change their legal name and sex, and imposed harsh punishments for those who fail to treat individuals in accordance with their self-declared gender identity.
GERMANY: The women's prison in Chemnitz has admitted to housing multiple trans-identified male sex offenders with female inmates after demanding over €1000 to release the data.
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) December 16, 2024
Some women at the prison have reported being sexually harassed by the men.https://t.co/TbRCKefjGz
“In order to fight for the withdrawal of self-identification law, it is crucial to educate people, especially women, about what it really means for them and to show them real-life examples,” Zippel told Reduxx at the time. “I hope that with our research we have reached many people who were not aware of the consequences of the new German self-ID law and that we have encouraged many people to speak out critically, so that hopefully one day no woman will have to endure being incarcerated with a man anymore.”
Across Germany, the number of trans inmates reported varies dramatically from state to state. In Berlin, 24 were found to have been incarcerated with women since 2020, with 15 of those being recorded just in the last year alone. In Hesse, there have been eleven since 2020, while Mecklenburg-Vorpommern declared there to be only four, the same number as in the city state of Hamburg by July last year.
Other states had older data, with Baden-Württemberg recording eight trans prisoners in February 2022, and Bavaria only having data from 2019, which noted that they had six. Some states, such as Brandenburg and Saarland, do not have any data available.
While the survey provides some insight into the consequences of housing trans-identified males with women, the full picture is impossible to discern. This is due to the fact that transgender and non-binary identifying prisoners are only recorded as such if they demand special accommodations due to their gender identity.
Speaking to Die Welt last year, René Müller, Federal Chairman of the Association of Prison Officers in Germany, said that not every incident would have even been recorded to begin with.
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