Tara Hudson, a 26 year old transgender woman from Bath, faces being sent to an all-male prison after a judge decided that her ‘legal gender’ is male, despite that fact that she has lived as a woman all of her adult life and has undergone six years of gender reassignment surgery.
Tara’s mother Jackie has revealed to local media in Bath that Tara’s doctor has confirm that she is medically considered a woman, but because her passport still says she is male, the judge ruled that she should be sent to a men’s prison.
The law might see a man, but #ISeeTara. #TransInquiry @Commonswomequ https://t.co/QeJhfvOUFG
— Bath Amnesty (@bathamnesty) October 27, 2015
Nearly 50,000 people have signed a Change.org petition asking Bath Magistrates, the Prison Governor of HMP Bristol men’s prison and the British Judicial System to send Tara, who was convicted of assault after an incident last year, to a women’s prison instead.
“I just want to get my daughter into a safe, female environment where she belongs and will continue to fight the decision,” Tara’s mother Jackie told the Bath Chronicle. “We think it’s totally outrageous. I don’t think she will cope well at all,” she continued, adding, “I just feel the men are going to go after her”.
We’re extremely concerned about the decision to place Tara Hudson in an all-male prison #ISeeTara
— Stonewall (@stonewalluk) October 27, 2015
The Change.org petition points to a Californian study that found “transgender women in male prisons are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than in the general population, with 59 percent reporting sexual assaults”, as well as a report published earlier this year about HMP Bristol specifically, which found that violence has “risen sharply” in the prison, with levels “now considerably higher than in similar prisons” and “not enough being done to protect some vulnerable prisoners”.