Walter Finch
ONE of Spain’s toughest prisons has been forced to implement ‘shower watch’ shifts due to a female prisoner falling pregnant after a trans inmate was transferred to the women’s wing.
The reports of various sexual encounters during shower time have caused a scandal at Fontcalent Prison in Alicante.
It comes after the female section of the prison received a prisoner of Bulgarian origin who had spent several years in the men’s section, primarily for crimes of theft and kidnapping.
The inmate would have rubbed shoulders with a number of killers, rapists and drug barons, potentially including Irish crime boss John Gilligan, who was there in 2019.
During this period, the randy inmate apparently underwent a gender transition process, self-identified as a woman and adopted a female name.
However, the prisoner did not undergo hormonal treatments or surgeries to finish the process and retained the original male genitalia.
A request was then put in to transfer the prisoner to the female population – which was granted.
Prison sources have disclosed that once in the female wing, the prisoner came out as a lesbian, and quickly struck up a relationship with a fellow inmate.
A series of steamy shower romps ensued, according to prison sources, and little time later a female inmate informed prison authorities she was pregnant.
She was permitted to leave the prison and visit an abortion specialist, but in the end elected to keep the child.
It has been reported that the trans prisoner has been removed from the women’s wing.
Fontcalent Prison declined to comment, stating that it is ‘a personal matter that concerns an inmate.’
Spain’s new ‘Trans Law’, which came into effect in March, allows a person to change their gender identity in the civil register without undergoing a two-year hormonal treatment or obtaining a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as was previously required.
Yet its implementation remains pending in penitentiary facilities.
Currently, ‘medical and psychological evaluation reports’ indicating the absence of gender dissonance or personality disorders are required for searches of transgender individuals, module reassignment and changes of inmate names.
However, the Trans Law doesn’t require these evaluations and asserts that gender self-determination is sufficient.
Thus prison staff find themselves caught in ‘legal limbo’ as the Trans Law, while in force for months, lacks definitive protocols on how it should be implemented within prisons.
“Prisons are a complex environment, housing individuals deprived of liberty, and a proper internal separation is essential to ensure the best penitentiary treatment,” explained a source.
“Without well-defined protocols and procedures, it will be much harder to prevent the law from being misused.”
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