Mick Hartley

Rape, by definition, is a crime committed by men. Or, until the introduction of the female penis, used to be:

Hundreds of suspected rapists have been wrongly labelled as women by police despite government instructions not to do so, it has been reported.

New data suggests the scale that officers have logging the self-declared gender of alleged sex attackers.

Figures obtained under freedom of information laws revealed that over the past four years, police forces referred 260 “females” to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider a charge of rape.

A further 209 suspects were said to have been recorded with an “unknown” sex, which is thought to include identifications as non-binary.

Non-binary rapists? Who'd have thought?

However, by law, rape can only be committed by a biological male.

But that was before Stonewall came along, and police forces started to compete for those lovely Diversity Champions awards.

The latest figures come despite the Home Office telling police forces that they should be recording the biological sex of offenders rather than their self-declared gender identity.

However, it remains voluntary guidance and there is no date for when the order will become mandatory. The way in which gender is recorded remains down to each individual force.

Research by Keep Prisons Single Sex, a campaign group, shows that last year, of the 26 forces that responded to its FoI requests, 22 recorded sex based on a person’s gender identity – with 20 of those doing so on that basis however the person wanted to identify.

Of the 13 forces that answered questions on non-binary suspects, seven forces recorded them in a third category including “other”.

Dr Kate Coleman, director of KPSS, said that “the data is rendered useless”, which makes it impossible to “formulate a proper response at any level of criminal justice”.

“Sex registered at birth is the most salient variable for offending and risk,” she said. “To decide to record somebody as something else and then just pretend that is sex is just ludicrous.

“It is also an absolute travesty for the victims. If these are men being recorded as women, then these victims have had the most gut-wrenching, visceral, and accurate experience of that person’s sex registered at birth. To have that dressed up as actually no, that is a woman, is a complete betrayal.”

Police and prosecutors have been repeatedly criticised over cases in which rapists have been allowed to self-identify as women in court proceedings.

Convicted paedophile Karen White, who was born Stephen Wood, was accused of repeatedly raping a woman in 2016 while undergoing gender reassignment, but before undergoing full surgery.

Appearing at Leeds Crown Court in 2018, White pleaded guilty to two counts of rape. During the case, White was referred to as a woman, with prosecutors even referring to “her penis”.