Ex-prison inmate, Frances, tells her story of living with a trans-identifying male (a man) in an NZ women’s jail

Frances¹ remembers feeling the scratch of the man’s facial whiskers against her cheek, as he vigorously tried forcing her to the ground after putting her in a headlock. This man, who was a multiple offender, was in Auckland women’s jail with Frances, because he said he was a woman. The assault occurred in 2012, and even though Frances is a resilient woman, the memory in all its detail remains with her. Unlike their perpetrators, those who are assaulted seldom forget it.

In 1997, Frances went to jail after being convicted of murder. Right from the start she denied killing anyone, and has been fighting to wipe her conviction ever since. Her real name is well known in certain circles, and her fight is high profile. However, this is the first time she has spoken about what it was like to live with the first fully intact trans-identifying male – a TIM (i.e. a man) – who’d been transferred to Auckland women’s jail from the men’s. He called himself ‘Bronwyn’, although his real name is said to be Brian. He will be referred to as Brian here, because coercing women to consider a man to be a woman just because he says he is, neglects to recognise the toll that may take on women’s mental and emotional health, especially disempowered women.

In New Zealand, a conviction for murder carries a life sentence of which at least ten years must be served in jail before the offender is eligible for parole. Offenders remain on parole for the rest of their lives, and can be recalled to continue serving their life sentence if they transgress during that time. If re-incarcerated, they don’t get given a set term to serve, but must apply for parole in due course to be released again.

After initially serving 12 years in jail, Frances was released on parole in 2010, but was recalled in 2012 when she got mixed up in a conflict deemed significant enough to have breached her parole conditions. Because she is considered ‘a lifer’ – i.e. someone with a life sentence – very little leeway is given for any misdemeanours, and she served another four years in jail before being paroled again.

When Frances first went back to jail, she went into a high security unit. By that time, a couple more TIMs had quickly followed the first one into the women’s jail, and were also in the high security unit. Frances didn’t stay there long, and was soon in low security where another TIM was also housed. In NZ, men who say they’re women can apply to be housed in the women’s jail after being convicted for a crime, if the crime doesn’t involve a sexual assault against a woman, or if they haven’t been known to have sexually assaulted a woman for seven years.

Prior to fully intact TIMs being allowed into the women’s jail, Frances had only ever encountered a ‘sex change’ transsexual in there before. When she returned to jail, it was a surprise to her to realise that fully intact males were being housed with the women. These days, they’re segregated more strictly, after the alleged scandal of a female prisoner who was made pregnant with twins by her TIM cellmate (known to Frances), who’d stopped taking his female hormones. Seemingly, the policymakers and management of Corrections NZ, who enabled this, didn’t see it coming.

Nowadays, TIMs are no longer housed in high security, or share cells with women. All the cells in Auckland women’s jail have their own toilets and showers, so there are no communal ablution blocks where the TIMs mingle with women.

However, in 2012 when Frances was recalled to the Auckland women’s jail, they were being put into cells and the self-care units with women. Self-care units are furnished four-bedroom houses on the prison grounds, and each house is shared by those inmates who have achieved minimum security classification. They are also eligible for day release to go shopping, and/ or go to sponsored work. Mothers and babies are housed in the self-care units, as well. This was where Frances eventually ended up for three years before being re-paroled. It was also where, without warning, she found herself sharing a house with Brian who had been allowed into the Auckland women’s jail.

On her first day in the self-care unit she had been assigned to, Frances noticed that there was no food of any sort in the cupboards, fridge, or freezer. It transpired that Brian had decided that the money they received each week for the household grocery shopping was to be divided up equally amongst the housemates, and each would shop for themselves only. The result was bare cupboards in the kitchen, with individual food hoards elsewhere in the house. Somehow, Frances was expected to survive on nothing until the allocation of the following week’s money. Luckily, she was working in the jail’s kitchen at the time, so managed to feed herself from what she could garner there.

After a couple of weeks of adhering to this system of individual grocery shopping, she put her foot down and insisted they shopped for groceries as a household, as per the intention of the household money allocation. Brian didn’t like it, and in Frances’s words “went ballistic”. She stood her ground, and in his rage he went for her. He was a man in his mid-sixties, at a guess, on female hormones, and he still easily got Frances - twenty years younger than him - in a headlock. He tried to force her to the ground, which she resisted with all her might. Having been in an abusive relationship before, she knew what a man did with his fists and boots once he got her on the ground. One of the other female housemates helped Frances get away from him, and they rushed to sound the alarm.

After investigating the assault, prison management facilitated a meeting between Frances and Brian, and asked Frances to decide whether or not he could stay in the self-care unit with her and the other women. He cried, begged, and pleaded with her to give him another chance. If she said no, it would mean a revocation of his minimum-security status. She relented out of pity for him, and said yes. Although he never behaved so badly again, and they settled into a benign living arrangement afterwards, in hindsight she believes that prison management shouldn’t have asked her to make that decision. Perhaps they thought that by doing so they were putting some control back into Frances’s hands. The reality, though, is that many women in prison have an abusive background at the hands of a man, and Frances believes that her decision-making then was influenced by the triggering of some old survival tactics, of which being conciliatory was one. The thought always lurks in the back of an abused woman’s head about what a violent man might do to her at another opportunity if he’s thwarted in his wishes.

The men who say they’re women are no different to any other man, says Frances. Those she saw in jail tried to adopt what they thought were ‘feminine’ ways and behaviours, but most couldn’t disguise the way they walked and talked, nor their mannerisms and looks, no matter how much they tried. If things didn’t go their way, masculine-type displays of bad temper and attempted assertions of dominance quickly reappeared. She remembers a time when cooking dinner for the household in her self-care unit - as she did most evenings out of choice - that ended up being a bit delayed, because she was talking to one of the other women. Brian began getting agitated and making his displeasure known by banging cupboard doors, interrupting them with loud, indirect, vague exclamations of annoyance, and unnecessary questions. Since his assault on Frances, however, he didn’t dare escalate it past that.

Her description of the men she saw in the women’s jail who said they were women was somewhat colourful and less than flattering. When asked how the women felt about having those men incarcerated with them, she said that generally they just resign themselves to accepting the situation, because the women feel they have no choice but to do that. Abused women have had years, or a lifetime, of being made to believe that no one cares about them, so don’t think their feelings or opinions about it would matter, anyway. They also want to get out of jail as soon as possible, and making a fuss about anything doesn’t go in their favour. This was also part of the reason that Frances didn’t take her complaint about Brian’s assault on her further. She was aware, as well, that demonstrating she could ‘work through a problem’ was part of how prison management would assess her readiness to be re-paroled.

So, the man who’d assaulted Frances stayed in the self-care unit with her. It took a long time for her to reach a measure of comfort about having to live with him, even though he never flew off the handle again like he did when he assaulted her. He acquiesced to grocery shopping as a household, instead of individually, and needless to say after about four weeks the cupboards were full, and meals could be made for everyone to eat together.

Even if a man has applied the label of ‘woman’ to himself, he is still a man, but for some reason the management of Corrections NZ don’t believe he is – in policy, at least. But do they believe otherwise in reality? Frances says sometime after she was re-paroled in 2016, Corrections NZ stopped allowing TIMs to share cells or self-care units with women. However, they still incarcerate those men who call themselves women with actual women, even though they know enough to keep them segregated where it matters most.

Frances has a successful work/life balance now. She remains determined to clear her name of the murder charge she has always disputed, and for which she spent sixteen years of her life in jail.

¹Frances is not her real name.