Germany has begun transferring violent male convicts who “identify” as women into female prisons, despite the fact the nation hasn’t yet formally enacted its gender self-identification law. Among them are dangerous sex offenders and pedophiles.
On April 12, the German Parliament, or Bundestag, passed one of the world’s most far-reaching sex self-determination policies, known as the Self-Determination Act (SBGG). But while the gender identity policies are not set to come into effect until November, correctional institutions are already transferring male criminals into the female prison estate in anticipation of the law.
Women‘s rights organization Initiative Lasst Frauen Sprechen (Let Women Speak) requested figures from all ministries of justice in the federal states in Germany on how many men have been or are currently imprisoned in women’s correctional facilities since 2023. The campaign group also asked for information on the nature of the crimes the men had committed.
The response from government officials show that males are already being housed in women’s prisons in every federal state, a practice that began months ahead of the German self-identification law coming into force in November. The only federal state that does not house men in women’s prisons is Saarland, because there are no women’s prisons in the region. As a result, trans-identified male criminals in the state may be relocated to female facilities in other federal districts.
Of the federal states with males housed in women’s prisons, Berlin stands out as the most saturated. According to official information from the Senate Department of Justice in Berlin, since 2023 “15 people whose sex was registered as male at birth have been imprisoned in the Berlin correctional facility for women.”
Details of their crimes and convictions were not provided on the grounds that the Berlin prisons do not report the offenses to the Senate Administration. Therefore, that information is not required to be revealed through the Freedom of Information Act.
The Berlin Senate Department of Justice describes 15 men in the women’s prison as a “small number” and the disclosure of the criminal offenses as a “danger to the identifiability of these people,” suggesting their crimes were highly-publicized.
Added rationalization for withholding information regarding their convictions, according to authorities, is to avoid the “stigmatization” of these male criminals.
However, as previously reported by Reduxx, male sex offenders are among the men being transferred to the Berlin women’s prison. Trans-identified sex offender Ömer “Laura” K., who posed as a female police officer and received a 7-year prison sentence for rape, aggravated robbery and extortion, was recently revealed to be among the transfers. While serving his sentence in a women’s prison, he will soon stand trial for the possession of child pornography.
Another presumed transfer identified by Reduxx is 63-year-old transgender pedophile “Klaus T.”, who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the sexual abuse of his 9-year-old granddaughter and the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl from the neighborhood, as well as for the production of child pornography. Klaus was sentenced “as a woman,” indicating he either has or will be sent to a women’s facility.
German outlet NiUS reports that the male prisoners in Berlin are not housed in isolation from women, but are in a ward with women and have shared access to their spaces. While “case by case” decisions can be made to transfer a male inmate back to a men’s prison on the basis of risk, it is unclear if any such cases have arisen yet.
According to information from the Berlin Senate Administration, there have been no complaints of assaults or attacks by male transfers on female inmates. However, information from the state ministry in Sachsen indicates the government has been actively suppressing such data from release.
In January of 2024, incarcerated women in Sachsen spoke to the Freie Presse and reported that a trans-identified male prisoner threatened to assault them, insulted them, and forced them and the female officers to watch him masturbate. Female officers then allegedly refused to monitor him when he was taken to the security cell. When asked by a journalist from Die Welt why these attacks were not reported, the state ministry claimed that the attacks had “no criminal relevance.”
The reports from female inmates stand in stark contrast to the denial of such cases from the Berlin Senate Administration.
On August 12, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, published a letter she had sent to the German Government addressing the threat to women’s rights presented by the Gender Self-Determination Act (SBGG).
“While the Gender Self-Determination Act states that it does not regulate matters concerning detention facilities, it also currently does not provide any express safeguards to prevent sexual predators from potentially exploiting the law to gain access (for example, as inmates or staff) to female prison facilities,” Alsalem wrote in her letter, which was initially sent in June of 2024.
The UN Rapporteur continued to inform the German government that detaining male convicts with female inmates constituted an acknowledged form of torture, adding, “In the context of deprivation of liberty, there is a recognized need to protect prison spaces designated exclusively for women. Threats and a sense of collective insecurity or violation of female inmates’ privacy in the presence of individuals of the opposite sex in prison spaces have been acknowledged by the Special Rapporteur on Torture as forms of ill-treatment.”
Alsalem also released a response she had received from the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on August 5, which stated: “The Federal Republic of Germany refutes the allegation that in ensuring the right to self-determination, it ‘falls short of a number of human rights obligations’.”
The reply continued: “The new law on legal gender recognition will enable non-binary, intersex and transgender persons to change their birth registries and subsequently identifying documents in line with their gender identity. The law does not make any changes to existing legislation, such as the General Act on Equal Treatment and therefore has no legal implications on the access to single sex spaces.”
It also emphasized that “the Association of Women’s Shelters explicitly welcomed the new law and voiced its concern over the increasing violence against intersex and transgender persons identifying as female
and their particular marginalisation,” and added that “the Association points out that women in all their diversity should receive shelter from violence.”
The former Justice Senator for the State of Berlin and politician from the German Green Party, Dirk Behrendt, campaigned for the legal reform for people who claim a transgender status. In 2021, Berlin became the first federal state in Germany to introduce sex self-identification. Behrendt described this as a “requirement for a contemporary dealing with trans people in prison.”
The principle of separation “of male and female prisoners” was deleted from Berlin’s legal code. In its place, the statement “prisoners of different sexes are housed separately from each other” was added, as well as the assertion that “the principle of separate accommodation can be deviated in individual cases, taking into account the personality and needs of the prisoners, especially if prisoners’ gender identity differs from their legal sex or if they permanently feel neither male nor female.”
The change in law affects correctional facilities for adults, correctional facilities for juveniles, forensic correctional facilities and pre-trial detention centers in the state of Berlin.
Behrendt, who lives with his husband in Berlin-Kreuzberg, has appeared several times in public hoisting the trans pride flag onto public buildings. The pink, blue, and white flag was designed by crossdressing fetishist Robert Hogge, who wrote stories about swapping bodies with lesbians and marrying a little girl who doesn’t age, as Reduxx has described previously.
Since leaving his post as the Justice Senator, Behrendt is now working as a judge again, and is campaigning to include a so-called “sexual identity” in the German constitution. Legal scholars have warned that this could also lead to the inclusion of pedophilia as a “sexual identity,” and that amending the constitution with such wording could “enable pedocriminals to demand their own rights.”
In August of 2022, it was reported that three men had been transferred to the women’s prison since September 2021 and that another three men had been sent directly to the women’s prison system in Berlin. Two of the “trans people” are imprisoned on convictions of child sexual abuse and sexual assault. Within two years, the number of men in Berlin women’s prison has almost tripled.
The Federal Chairman of the Association of Prison Officers in Germany (BSBD) René Müller told Die Welt that attacks by male prisoners on women were not always reported by the victims. He warns that prisoners will figure out “pretty quickly” how to exploit the system “for more comfortable accommodation” or for “criminal purposes.”
