A violent offender with a lengthy criminal record will be sent to an all-women’s prison after a court heard that “Stephen aka Stephanie” Mottershead was “undergoing gender reassignment”.
The 41-year-old Manchester resident was arrested on August 11 last year, while already on bail for a previous assault, after stabbing Liam Walsh in the kidney in an argument over noise.
Motterhead’s attack left a neighbour requiring a three-day hospital stay with damage to the liver and kidneys as well as inflicting severe psychological trauma, resulting in Walsh having been unable to return to either work or the block of flats due to panic attacks.
Appearing under the name “Stephen aka Stephanie” at Minshull Street Crown Court, where the defendant was referred to as a woman “undergoing gender reassignment”, according to The Times, Mottershead was ordered to serve two years and four months at Styal women’s prison in Cheshire for unlawful wounding.
Highlighting alarm expressed by a number of senior figures including the head of Britain’s Prison Governors Association over the risks associated with sending biological males to all-women’s prisons, the newspaper noted the defendant had served previous sentences in all-male prisons for crimes including robbery and wounding.
Sentencing, Judge John Potter said Walsh could have died as a result of the attack, explaining that Mottershead’s knife “went through his liver and through to his kidney and almost hit a main artery”.
“It’s quite clear that he still suffers from the injury inflicted by you,” he told the defendant, adding: “This is regrettably not the first time you have been convicted of a violent offence. In 1994, you were convicted of robbery, in 1995 you were convicted of wounding somebody, in 2007 you convicted of possession of a weapon, and in 2012 you were convicted of the offence of battery.
“There are other offences which do not make matters worse, but making matters significantly worse is your conviction in September 2017 of assault occasioning actual bodily harm,” he said.
Feminists have warned that female prisoners will be put at risk under government plans to “streamline and de-medicalise the process” of legally changing gender, after a study last year revealed almost half of transgender inmates in British prisons are sex offenders.
Huge sums of money ploughed into the cause have seen the transgender lobby become increasingly powerful in recent years, with killer Karen Jones — born Mark — speaking at the House of Lords earlier this year on how the country’s criminal justice system can better serve prisoners who “identify” as the opposite sex.
The LGBT activist, who was jailed after strangling a former partner and a brutal assault and attempted rape of a shopkeeper which the judge said was fueled by resentment at the victim’s having been born female, was invited to speak by “diversity” champion Lord Narendra Patel.