Transgender inmate with history of sex crimes loses bid to be transferred to women's prison

A violent sexual offender who recently transitioned gender from male to female has lost a legal bid to be transferred to a women’s prison.

Amanda Joy Cooper, 59, failed to convince Federal Court Justice Janet Fuhrer that the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) was unreasonable in refusing a transfer request last summer. Instead, the CSC moved Cooper from the Atlantic Institution in New Brunswick to Millhaven Institution in Ontario.

Cooper has been incarcerated since 2001 as a dangerous offender under an indefinite period of incarceration, convicted of four sexual assaults, forcible confinement and other crimes against adult women and one girl, mostly in Montreal. The victims include female correctional officers, and also members of the public during one three-day spree in 1998 of “sexually victimizing five women and one minor, in public areas in the community,” the judge wrote.

All those crimes were committed long before Cooper’s 2020 diagnosis of gender dysphoria and 2024 surgery to construct female genitalia and breasts.

This new decision of the Federal Court was about an application for judicial review of the decision of the CSC on Cooper’s request last summer to be transferred to a women’s penitentiary.

An earlier separate decision refused the same basic request for a transfer, partly on the grounds that Cooper would pose a high risk of harm to inmates and staff at a women’s prison.

At a recent hearing, Cooper’s lawyer said Cooper had been groped, taunted and threatened by male inmates. Cooper’s parole officer likewise said Cooper is especially vulnerable among male inmates, “and that it was fair to say Ms. Cooper’s refusal to integrate with the population at Atlantic Institution is consistent with her reasonable fear for her safety.”

Cooper was at the Atlantic Institution in New Brunswick before asking to be moved to a women’s prison, and instead was moved last October to Millhaven Institution in Ontario, a maximum security prison for men.

In both prisons, Cooper has been held in a special unit and is segregated from other inmates almost all the time.

The question before the judge was narrow. Cooper did not challenge the authority of the Correctional Service of Canada to transfer inmates between prisons. Cooper’s claim, as the judge put it, was that “once CSC decided to transfer her, it was required to make a reasonable, lawful, and justified decision about the receiving institution.”

The judge found the prison service “did just that.”

The decision was not unreasonable, the judge found.

“It is not without some reluctance that I thus dismiss this judicial review application, because it means leaving Ms. Cooper, a woman, in a male institution,” the judge wrote. “These Reasons and Judgment should not be viewed, however, as any kind of blanket determination that a transgender or gender-diverse inmate who is designated as a (dangerous offender) cannot be transferred to an institution that aligns with their gender identity, and that may happen eventually for Ms. Cooper.”

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