Female prisoner tells of ordeal at the hands of predator Karen White who molested four inmates

A prisoner is warning today about the dangers of putting transgender inmates in women’s prisons after a pedophile rapist sexually assaulted her behind bars.

Laura Goldsmith, 38, has revealed how she fell prey to notorious sex offender Karen White at HMP New Hall in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

In chilling echoes of the shocking case of transgender double rapist Isla Bryson who was committed to a women’s-only prison in Scotland, Laura recounted how White was allowed to carry out a campaign of abuse in plain sight after being committed to jail despite not undergoing surgery. and she bragged that she was not receiving hormone treatment.

White was a convicted pedophile and serial sex offender on remand for grievous bodily injury.

White went on to be jailed for life after sexually assaulting two inmates at New Hall.

Bravely waiving her right to anonymity, Laura said the system had failed her, allowing predatory sex offenders to prey on vulnerable women.

Speaking in the hope that other women never face a similar fate, Laura told MailOnline: ‘There is no doubt that some men are using the transgender issue to get into women’s prisons.

Either they do it because they are afraid of men’s prisons or because it gives them the opportunity to indulge their perversions.

There are men who try to abuse the system and are allowed to do so.

“The system puts women at risk by placing predatory men in its prisons. There has to be a lot more research.

‘You shouldn’t put yourself in danger inside a prison. This should never be allowed to happen again.

Laura spoke amid growing concerns about the safety of women in prisons after transgender double rapist Bryson was locked up with women.

Bryson, born Adam Graham, has been transferred to a men’s prison following a protest that has left Nicola Sturgeon in a storm of controversy.

Sturgeon, who had sought to relax gender identity rules, resigned drastically as Scotland’s first minister.

The shocking case was the latest in a series of scandals surrounding transgender sex offenders placed inside women’s prisons.

In October 2018, White, born Stephen Wood, was sentenced to life in prison at Leeds Crown Court for raping two women and sexually assaulting two inmates at HMP New Hall.

The attacks on the prison occurred between September and October 2017 while she was remanded in the women’s prison where she began gender realignment, wearing a wig, makeup and false breasts.

The court heard that White used her ‘transgender persona’ to contact vulnerable women.

Passing sentence, Judge Christopher Batty said: “You are predatory and very manipulative and, in my opinion, you are a danger.”

“You pose a significant risk of serious harm to children, women and the general public.”

White, who was transferred to a men’s prison after admitting to the assaults, has denied sexually assaulting two other women at the prison and those allegations are on file.

Now, Laura has come forward to reveal that she, too, was a victim of the devil when she was sent to prison in February 2017 after being sentenced to 28 months for commercial theft crimes.

Laura recounted how she had been battling drug addiction and how she was “fragile and vulnerable” when White, 57, pounced on her in the exercise yard.

Laura said White attacked her when she was sitting on a bench in the exercise yard one Saturday afternoon.

Laura, who is 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs just seven stone, recounted how she was quickly intimidated by White’s presence.

She said: ‘She was very sleazy and sassy. She tried to befriend me for two minutes, then she went right out with a sexual assault.

‘She came over and sat next to me and said ‘Hi, I’m Karen.’ She had a very manly voice. I had seen her around and heard that she was kind of gross.

I moved to the end of the bench, but she kept walking. She would ask me if I liked men or women. I told her that she was gay and she said ‘Oh well, we’ll see about that.’ I can make you not love women anymore.’

“She was speaking to me as a man, not as a transgender woman. She put her hand on my thigh and then slid it between my legs. She was wearing sweatpants. They were quite baggy.

‘I froze and then asked her to get off me. She grabbed my breast with her other hand. That’s when my friend came and I got up.

She was tall and well built. She was on a mission. She was supposed to be taking hormones, but she said she hadn’t been taking them and she asked me if she could see the evidence of that.

‘She was saying ‘I know you like that’. I haven’t been taking my medication. You want to see’. I said no’. That was disgusting.’

Laura recounted that she did not return to the exercise yard until the following weekend, but White attacked her again.

She said: ‘We went out and she came over and started harassing me. I didn’t go out for a long time after that. I didn’t go out for three or four months.

“Eventually I started dating again and she continued to harass me. She was reaching out and trying to grab me. She’d slap my butt, she’d follow me around and say ‘I know you want it.’

‘When he put his arm around me, it was more like a headlock. She could feel the force of her behind her and it was scary.

‘She was manipulative and creepy. She was there to take advantage of vulnerable people and she was doing it in plain sight.

The prison officers were sitting in the exercise yard drinking coffee and chatting. They weren’t paying much attention.

Describing the effect of the abuse, he said: “I took antidepressants for years afterward.” I was having very bad nightmares, waking up in cold sweats.

‘I stopped writing to outsiders. He made me really depressed and traumatized.

‘There were a couple of times where I was using drugs there and normally I wouldn’t use drugs in prison. It was because I was feeling down and wanted to stop thinking about what she did to me.

‘After that, I wasn’t very confident. During my last sentence there was a transgender prisoner. He used to go out to the exercise yard. He really distrusted her. It turned out that she was very nice and I felt bad about it, but it was because of how she had been with me.

Laura said that she did not report the attack because “she did not want to be looked at as a weed.”

But she added: “I wish I would have done it now, as maybe that would have prevented it from happening to other women who were attacked.”

“It also makes you wonder how many other victims have not come forward.” Laura said of White, “I feel like it was all an act so she could get into a women’s institute and take advantage of vulnerable people.” I think she thought I was an easy target.

She was there the whole time I was there. She made a lot of people nervous. She had a few friends, but many of the women found her creepy. “People would walk away from her because they knew she was creepy, but then she would use the transgender card.

‘She wasn’t the only one. The last time I was in prison there were about 20 transgender women. Some of them are really nice. Some of them can be said to be genuinely transgender, but others are there to avoid going to an all-boys institute, and some have some kind of sick motive.

‘Some look like they’re not even trying. They put on a wig and women’s clothes and that’s it and there are ways to cheat in terms of people not taking drugs or hormones.

“I think the solution is to have a prison that is only for transgender people. Then the women could be safe.

The Government is currently drawing up plans to reform its accommodation policy for transgender prisoners. It will mean that transgender women with male genitalia or who have been convicted of sexual offenses will not serve their sentences in women’s prisons. The new guidance “will allow ministers to consider exemptions on a case-by-case basis, although only the most truly exceptional cases will be considered.”

A government spokesperson said: “We will be publishing an updated policy framework shortly, which will set out the new guidance in detail and how it will be implemented by the Prison Service.

‘The implementation of this new policy will take effect shortly after we have published the revised framework.

‘The safety of all prisoners is paramount. These changes will ensure a sensitive and common sense approach to meeting the needs of women in custody, while continuing to ensure that transgender prisoners receive the appropriate support in whatever state they find themselves.”