Judge To Decide If Trans Inmate Serving Time For Sexual Assaults Against Women Will Be Moved To Female Prison

A transgender inmate serving time for violent sexual assaults against women is pushing to switch to a female facility.

Amanda Joy Cooper has been incarcerated since 2001 and holds a dangerous offender designation, Correctional Service Canada confirmed to National Post. Cooper recently had gender surgery and wants to transfer from a men’s maximum security facility in Ontario to a women’s prison, CBC News reported .

“Her message to us and her message to the court is: ‘I’m a woman with a vagina in a men’s prison. You think I’m safe here?'” said Cooper’s lawyer Jessica Rose from PATH Legal in Nova Scotia to CBC.

“From our perspective, Amanda’s gender identity and her genitals align. She is physically a woman, she identifies as a woman,” Rose told the publication. “She is post-gender confirmation affirmation surgery at top and bottom. So from our perspective, there’s no legal basis for CSC to be maintaining her in a men’s prison, regardless of whatever security or safety considerations they may be relying on.”

The Federal Court in Halifax will hear the case on Tuesday. Rose told CBC she would ask a judge to transfer Cooper before a full judicial review.

At a sentencing hearing in 2001, the court heard how Cooper assaulted his victims, including a girl as young as 12, only days after being released from prison for similar offenses. Cooper’s actions were “so severe” that even while Cooper was in prison, psychiatrist Dr. Louis Morissette said he had to stand between Cooper and female workers, the Montreal Gazette reported at the time.

Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) told National Post it has received 129 requests from natal males seeking placement or transfer in a women’s institution since 2017. Of these, 35 were approved, 72 were denied and 22 were withdrawn.

As of October 2025, there were 90 transgender women incarcerated in CSC institutions: 73 (or 81 per cent) were housed in men’s institutions and 17 (or 19 cent) in women’s institutions.

Although gender diverse inmates only make up roughly 1 per cent of all federal inmates, according to CSC, it’s become a controversial issue over the years. Advocacy groups that stand with transgender inmates say that those who identify as women are especially vulnerable and are not safe in male prisons. Advocates against say that transferring biological males to female prisons can put incarcerated women at risk of harassment, assault or worse.

One inmate who goes by the name Megan told LGBTQ2S+ magazine Xtra that her experience in a male federal prison in Canada was “terrifying.” She was born male but said she knew she was a woman since she was 10 years old. She filed three requests to transfer to a female institution, but was denied. Just before she received gender-confirming surgery, a request was finally approved. It brought her relief, as she feared “the threat of rape would have been constant” had she stayed in a male institution.

Heather Mason, a former inmate, was incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. in 2017. She is a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (CAWSBAR), a group that says its goal is preserving the rights and protections of women and girls. Transgender inmates were transferred there while she was serving her sentence.

“I know how it feels to be incarcerated with a violent sexual offender, because I’ve been incarcerated with them. It’s scary. You’re always on guard,” Mason told National Post.

In 2019, she heard the story of a woman with “an extensive history of childhood trauma and sexual abuse” who said she was groomed and harassed by a transgender inmate placed in the same unit, also at Grand Valley. That’s when Mason said she realized “nobody was going to speak up and support us women, and that I couldn’t stay silent.”

She connected with more women who had faced similar issues. In 2021, she wrote to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, pleading for change after what she described as “fallout of the Bill C-16 gender identity legislation.”

The 2017 bill amended the Canadian Human Rights Act to prevent discrimination based on gender identity or expression. After it became law, Correctional Services Canada passed the Commissioner’s Directive 100 , which came into effect in 2022 and allows for the placement of transgender inmates into male or female institutions based on gender identity or expression.

There are 8 individuals who received gender affirming surgery residing in women’s institutions as of October 2025. There are 72 individuals who have not received surgery but identify as transgender women residing in men’s institutions.

The CSC said it redacts numbers under five “to mitigate the risk of privacy breaches, given how low the numbers are.” Therefore, the agency was unable to provide data for individuals who received gender‑affirming surgery residing in men’s institutions or those born male who did not receive surgery residing in women’s institutions.

Chris Fleury, a constitutional lawyer at Charter Advocates Canada, said placing trans inmates in female institutions “creates enormous risk and harm for female inmates.” He said he’s heard from many women who have suffered a wide range of harms.

“At the one end of the spectrum would be the most serious, things like sexual assault. At the other end of the spectrum things like harassment and sexual harassment and this sort of thing, but they are potentially exposed to that sort of behaviour on the part of a trans inmate,” he told National Post. “And it’s behaviour that we just don’t see from female inmates.”

Fleury was one of the lawyers retained by CAWSBAR to file a lawsuit challenging the federal government, alleging that the directive infringes on the rights of female inmates. Preliminary motions are expected to begin next month.

Although it’s not a new issue, Fleury said that it has become more prominent since 2017 when Bill C-16 was passed.

“It sort of reverses the onus and says that an inmate will be placed according to their gender identity or expression, unless there are overriding health and safety concerns,” he said.

A CSC report published in 2022 found that over 80 per cent of gender diverse offenders with sexual offence histories were transgender women. “Sexual offending indicators showed that the majority of these offences were committed while living as their biological sex, and that the highest proportion of victims were children or female,” the report said.

Many years prior to transitioning, while living as a man under a different name, Cooper was found guilty of committing sexual assaults in 1998, according to court documents.

Cooper was described by Judge Claude Provost as a person suffering “from a sadistic paraphilia” who tended to attack adult women to “control and master” at the same time as wanting to have “sexual contact with them.” Provost said Cooper exhibited this behaviour since adolescence and was a dangerous offender.

The Montreal Gazette reported in 2001 that Cooper had even assaulted women during a previous stint in prison, including a guard.

At a sentencing hearing, a psychiatrist told the court that Cooper could not stop attacking women. It started with an 11-year-old girl that Cooper molested at a gym.

Three days after serving a previous sentence, Cooper grabbed a 12-year-old girl in a mall parking lot and told her: “I’ll rape you,” according to the Gazette. Cooper attacked a 53-year-old woman who was getting out of her car two days later. Only an hour after that, in the same location, Cooper grabbed a woman, told her to remove her clothes and pulled down her own pants.

A 2017 affidavit filed in court and obtained by CBC revealed that Cooper was assessed for gender dysphoria and in 2010 started identifying as a woman. Cooper complained of being bullied.

Conversely, records obtained by the outlet showed apprehension on the part of CSC to allow Cooper to transfer. Cooper had been “increasingly verbally abusive” toward female staff, a parole officer said in an affidavit from September 2025, according to CBC. Cooper was also prohibited from having contact with certain female staff.

“Overall, CSC believes that the applicant’s gender identity, hormone treatments, and gender affirming surgery have in no way mitigated her risk to reoffend,” the affidavit said, CBC reported.

Mason said she is against any biological male transferring to a female institution. A lot of incarcerated women are dealing with “depression, anxiety, other mental health problems, and they can’t cope,” she said. Many have pasts that include domestic violence and sexual assault. She said the presence of transgender women can be traumatic while inmates try to work through their programs in prison.

“The easiest solution is to use the empty pods, ranges and wings in men’s prisons and create a gender diverse range where they can tailor it to support the unique needs of those men that identify as women, and they would still have access to all the amenities the prison has, and they’re kept separate from the men,” she said.

“That way, their needs are taken care of, their safety is taken care of, and the needs of women are taken care of, and the safety of women is taken care of.”

• FIRST READING: The Canadians being punished by the state for not believing in gender ideology
• Amy Hamm: Misgendering case an absurd waste of time and resources

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.