Mick Hartley

From the Mail:

A mother-of-four claims she pleaded guilty to a crime she didn't commit to avoid returning to a prison that housed two trans inmates locked up for murder and sex assault, MailOnline can reveal.

Amanda Benson, 42, from Inverkip, Scotland, was imprisoned on remand at HMP Greenock with the two trans women – murderer Alex Stewart, 34, and sexual assaulter Laura Miller, 30.

Neither have had gender surgery or taken gender-affirming hormones, Mrs Benson said.

Stewart – previously known as Alan Baker – was jailed for 19 years for stabbing father-of-two John Weir, 36, to death after they met on a dating site.

The trans prisoner reportedly started dating a female child killer in HMP Greenock in 2020.

Miller was jailed for almost two years in 2022 after she sexually assaulted a woman who had taken sleeping medication on multiple occasions in 2017 and even filmed one of the attacks, in which she made an offensive sexual remark about her.

Although she had committed the offence when she was in jail with Mrs Benson, it was only in 2022 that she was convicted of that crime. In 2018, she was in Greenock Prison for a different unknown crime.

Why the female pronouns?? They – the Mail – do well to report on this absurd state of affairs, but then compound the absurdity by referring to this man as a woman. It's, well,….absurd.

Mrs Benson revealed she was so terrified of being raped and impregnated by the murderer or sex pest that she had a contraceptive coil fitted at the prison run by the Scottish government.

She told MailOnline: 'I took a plea deal and plead[ed] guilty even though I didn't do it.

'It's terrifying to be in there with them so [I did anything] to get out of there.

'I felt the threat that I could have been raped by these men and that could have led to me falling pregnant.

'They were both quite tall. One was very heavy. He dressed like a man. The other guy tried to wear sparkly jeans.

'Neither had had any surgery. They just said they were women and wanted to be in a women's prison.

'We can't leave. We are locked up with them, no matter what.

'Even if they claim to be gay, you're in prison – it's very, very different.

'I think some of them just want an easier time and some of them are sexualised [and] like seeing themselves as women and being included as women.

'It's an affirmation for them.

'It validates them. It's a sexual thing.

'It could be that they are sexual deviants. You're putting a fox into the hen house.

'Not all men are rapists and murderers but you have to keep all men out to keep the bad ones out.'

The cells at Greenock Prison don't have shows in them, meaning women have to use communal showers. Rhona Hotchkiss, who was Governor of HMP Greenock until 2019, said: 'We had three or four trans women in at once. It was a horrific situation.

'None of them had identified as trans before they came into prison.

'The behaviour was appalling. They were clearly, most of them, there for sexual reasons.'

She added: 'Male staff are not allowed to go anywhere near those showers but trans women can.

'I knew of women who wouldn't shower.'

Mrs Benson said: 'You don't expect it, to be showering with men. Not in gyms, not anywhere. Especially not in prison.

Here's the video of former prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss: