An ongoing lawsuit against Correctional Service Canada (CSC) has forced the federal government to admit that female inmates have been raped by at least two trans-identified male transfers since the implementation of a gender identity housing policy in 2017. Despite the official admission, the Attorney General of Canada claims, in a statement of defense, that housing violent male convicts in women’s prisons “does not infringe the rights guaranteed to cisgender women inmates.”
In 2017, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) adopted an interim policy (Bulletin 584: Bill C-16) which allowed male inmates to be housed according to their “gender identity” rather than according to their biological sex. Five years later, in 2022, the CSC finalized its approach and formally enacted the policy titled Commissioner’s Directive 100: Gender Diverse Offenders. The guidelines detail the CSC’s “commitment to meeting the needs of its gender diverse offender population in ways that respect their human rights and ensure their safety and dignity.”
In April 2025, lawyers funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms launched a legal challenge on behalf of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (CAWSBAR). The non-profit organization has worked to preserve the sex-based rights and protections of women and girls across Canada. The lawsuit argues that allowing trans-identified male inmates to transfer to, and be housed in, the female estate poses a direct risk to female inmates and violates their constitutional rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The risks created by transferring a Trans-identifying Male Inmate to a Female Prison are not eliminated or alleviated by drugs (hormones) and/or surgery. Hormone therapy does not guarantee that the Trans-identifying Male Inmate with male genitalia will not have erectile capacity. Neither penectomy (surgical removal of the penis) nor gonadectomy (surgical removal of the testes) change other characteristics indicative of Male criminality including aggression and potential for violence,” reads the claim.
In a statement of defense filed on August 31, lawyers for the Attorney General defended the practice of housing trans-identified male inmates in the female estate: “A gender-diverse offender’s request to be placed in, or transferred to, an institution that better aligns with their gender identity or expression is determined through an individualized assessment that considers the offender’s risks and needs, CSC’s security and operational requirements, and health and safety considerations for the offender, other inmates, and CSC staff at the receiving institution.”
In response to CAWSBAR’s filing, the statement of defense reveals that one inmate was charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of criminal harassment in May 2020 after a female inmate filed a complaint.
Reduxx can reveal that the inmate, Steven “Sam” Mehlenbacher, had been transferred to the all-women’s prison Grand Valley Institute (GVI) after sexually assaulting female inmates at the Edmonton Institution for Women (EIW).
As reported by The Toronto Sun, Mehlenbacher began claiming to identify as a woman after his incarceration, some time between 2015 and 2019. A serial offender, Mehlenbacher has accumulated 16 bank robbery convictions. In May 2019 he was transferred to women’s facility GVI from EIW, and by March 2020 he was under investigation for sexual assault.
One former inmate who spoke to the outlet said Mehlenbacher told her he “just wants to get laid.”
“I’ve walked in on him having sex in the gym, in the bathroom making out with someone else and wanting a threesome with me,” the woman said. “Three women needed the morning-after pill.”
Reduxx previously spoke with the victim in the May 2020 ordeal, using the pseudonym of “Emma” to protect her identity. “Why don’t my rights matter? Why doesn’t the CSC care about the trauma I’ve gone through, and why have they put me in a situation where I could become a victim again?” Emma told Reduxx last year.
She was responding to having recently witnessed another sexual assault at GVI committed by a trans-identified male transfer. Frederick Radcliffe, who has been convicted of the rape of teenage girls on several occasions, was accused of sexually predatory behavior and assaults by multiple female inmates last year, and Emma had seen him attack another woman.
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
— REDUXX (@reduxx) February 25, 2025
A transgender pedophile currently housed in a women's prison in Canada is under investigation for sexually assaulting two female inmates.
Carissa Marie Radcliffe is serving a rare indeterminate sentence for raping multiple young girls.https://t.co/VLXE2fkHM4
Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI), located in Kitchener, is organized into a campus-style setting with several buildings, or “houses,” where inmates live together. Radcliffe, a convicted pedophile who claims to identify as a transgender woman, was transferred into a housing unit at GVI at the beginning of 2023.
Once officials became aware of the sexual assaults, Radcliffe was removed from House 11, where he had been staying with the women, and placed in a maximum security unit. Officers then began to interview all of the women who had been living in the same house, inquiring as to Radcliffe’s behavior. Some women noted that he had been walking around the housing unit while wearing only a shirt, naked from the waist down and exposing himself to the women.
One woman, “Maria”, came forward with an account of Radcliffe sexually abusing her in. The victim said that Radcliffe pushed her against a wall in an area near the library’s bathroom and forcefully shoved his hands down her pants before engaging in unwanted sexual contact.
Radcliffe had only been staying with the victim in House 11 for two weeks before he assaulted Maria. The dangerous sex offender had previously been living in a housing unit for Indigenous women, but was transferred to House 11 due to his ongoing sexual harassment of the women there.
Despite multiple reports of predatory and disturbing behavior, the CSC has now acknowledged that Radcliffe was charged with two counts of sexual assault for one instance in 2024.
Radcliffe, who now calls himself Carissa Maria, has a lengthy criminal history and is a convicted child sexual abuser. He was declared a Dangerous Offender in 2010, a designation which requires him to remain incarcerated until the parole board says he is no longer a risk to the public.
In 2017, Radcliffe, still using the name Frederick, appealed his 2009 conviction and his 2010 indeterminate sentence. The judge dismissed both appeals. It was around this time that Radcliffe began identifying as “transgender” and changed his name and pronouns. Soon after, he was transferred in to Edmonton Institution for Women (EIW).
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
— REDUXX (@reduxx) November 12, 2024
A transgender baby rapist currently housed at a women's prison in Canada brutally assaulted a female inmate after she called him a "pedophile."
The female inmate was then punished with segregation despite suffering from broken ribs.https://t.co/BdbihlLGtN
Also mentioned in the statement of defense is a 2018 incident involving Adam Laboucan, who is Canada’s youngest dangerous offender, and who was handed a rare indeterminate sentence after being convicted of the violent rape of a 3-month-old infant. Sometime in 2018, Laboucan began to identify as transgender and changed his name to Tara Desousa. It was around this time that Laboucan was transferred into the Fraser Valley Institution for Women (FVI) in Abbotsford, which features a unit for mothers and infants.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Laboucan has been observed leering at and making aggressive remarks towards the children at the FVI Mother-Child unit, leading to anger and concern from the female inmates.
In 2018, soon after he was transferred into FVI, a female inmate responded to Laboucan’s disturbing behavior by defending another woman and her baby, demanding that he desist in his threatening conduct and calling him a “pedophile.”
It was at that point that Laboucan “picked her up, threw her, and then charged at her once she was on the ground and continued the assault.” After prison guards intervened, the female inmate who had been attacked was punished by being placed in segregation for “inciting” his assault against her. This is despite the fact that she had suffered from multiple fractured ribs.
The CSC submitted charges against both inmates. But, in the statement of defense it is implied that the investigation into the matter was dropped upon the discovery that the assault occurred after the female inmate referred to the convicted pedophile as a “pedophile”.
Legal counsel for Attorney General Sean Fraser further claimed in the statement that the policy of housing violent males in women’s prisons “does not infringe the rights guaranteed to cisgender women inmates,” and said allegations of harm “relating to the placement and transfer of gender diverse offenders into women’s institutions are vague, lack specificity and are insufficiently connected to CD 100.”
Incredibly, the statement of defense also asserted that the use of the term “female”, as seen in the Justice Centre’s original filing, “risks mischaracterizing or misgendering gender diverse inmates,” and the Attorney General’s counsel insisted on using the term “cisgender women” instead.
It further clarifies that the CSC has never had a policy of housing inmates according to sex, and asserts that the CSC “had the implicit authority to place inmates according to gender identity prior to the introduction” of the 2017 interim guidelines.
Another reason Conservatives will ban biological men from women's prisons. Period, full stop. https://t.co/ZIlMIyLlyw
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) September 3, 2026
Speaking with Reduxx, female inmate advocate and founding member of CAWSBAR Heather Mason highlighted the “double standard” involved in putting women at risk in order to ensure the safety of trans-identified male inmates.
“The CSC is saying that putting trans-identifying male inmates into women’s prisons does not infringe the rights of women, while at the same time acknowledging sexual assault complaints that resulted in criminal charges. How do those two things make sense together?”
She continued: “These women are in your custody. They cannot leave. They cannot choose who they are locked up with. It is your job to keep them safe and rehabilitate them. Prison is their punishment. Being sexually assaulted by a male inmate is not supposed to be part of their sentence. So if a woman can be sexually assaulted by a male inmate CSC chose to put in a women’s prison and the government still says her rights are not being infringed, then what does count as an infringement?”
“If f the risk of sexual assault is relevant when deciding where a male inmate should be housed, why does that same risk suddenly stop mattering when it is female inmates who are being sexually assaulted?” Mason said. “We are told that trans-identifying male inmates are not safe in men’s prisons and need to be protected from sexual violence. Fine. Then why does that concern disappear when it is women who are at risk of sexual violence?”
“You cannot say the risk of rape matters when the person at risk is male, but then say women’s rights are not being infringed when women are sexually assaulted by male inmates placed in their prisons. That is the double standard. The violence problem started in men’s prisons, but instead of dealing with it there, the risk created by these transfers has been offloaded onto women.”