'Isla' Bryson is no longer a threat to Scottish women...now do 'Katie' Dolatowski
A dangerous and violent paedophile is still being held in the prison that nearly admitted a double-rapist
On Tuesday 24th January, trans-identified male, “Isla Bryson”, was found guilty of two rape charges. He was subsequently remanded to a female prison.
Prior to the sudden emergence of his ‘gender identity’, Adam Graham raped two different women who were both described in court as ‘vulnerable’. By the time his case came to trial, Graham had begun ‘identifying as a woman’ and had changed his name to Isla Bryson.
The warrant issued by the High Court in Glasgow recommended that Bryson be sent to HMP Barlinnie, a male-only facility. Nevertheless, following his guilty verdict, he was remanded to Cornton Vale women's prison.
Scottish Justice Secretary, Keith Brown, even expressed his support for the Scottish Prison Service’s decision to place Bryson in the female estate.
A risk assessment was to be carried out before a decision was made about Bryson’s long-term incarceration. (Surely, the risk of putting a violent rapist in a women’s prison is perfectly obvious? One might as well assess the risk of putting a choc-ice in the dishwasher.) There was every possibility he would remain in the female estate.
This case, however, became the focus of much media attention and sparked an outcry that a predatory sex offender was being held in a women’s facility. Even some of the most devoted gender zealots, such as Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, spoke out against the lunacy of housing a violent rapist with women prisoners.
The SNP was forced into a massive climbdown and on Thursday 26th January, it was announced that Bryson would be removed from Cornton Vale.
Speaking at First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament, Nicola Sturgeon stated that she does not believe it is possible to accommodate a rapist in the female estate and confirmed that Bryson would be moved from Cornton Vale. “Given the understandable public and parliamentary concern in this case”, she said, “I can confirm to parliament that this prisoner will not be incarcerated at Cornton Vale women's prison”. She added, “I hope that provides assurance to the public”.
No, it doesn’t. The news that Bryson will be unable to continue terrorizing female inmates at Cornton Vale is welcome, but it also shines a spotlight on the utter shambles that Scotland's Gender Recognition Reform Bill has become and the potential harm it poses.
Thanks to intensive media attention following Bryson’s incarceration in the female estate, the Scottish government had no choice but to intervene. But what of all the future Bryons who will slip, quietly and unknown, through the net?
Conservative MSP, Russell Findlay, proposed an amendment to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill which would have prevented convicted sex offenders from obtaining a GRC and accessing women’s prisons. This amendment was defeated when SNP and Scottish Greens voted against it. If, as Sturgeon now maintains, rapists should not be accommodated in the female estate, why did she not support Findlay’s amendment instead of blocking it?
And why is it that Isla Bryson cannot be incarcerated in Cornton Vale, but convicted paedophile and trans-identified male, Katie Dolatowski, who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl, remains there? Is there a sliding scale of predation which allows one sexually violent male to be accommodated among vulnerable women but not another?
In November 2022, convicted paedophile and trans-identified male, Katie Dolatowski, was moved to Cornton Vale.
In 2018 Katie Dolatowski filmed a 12-year-old-girl who was using a public toilet. A month later, he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in the women’s toilets at a supermarket. He grabbed the terrified child by the face, forced her into a cubicle, threatened to stab her and ordered her to take off her clothes. He pleaded guilty to voyeurism and sexual assault charges.
In 2019 Dolatowski was back in court on two separate occasions, accused of deleting the internet history on his phone and then of making ‘alarming’ internet searches. In 2022 it was revealed that he had been accommodated in a domestic violence refuge for vulnerable women and children after he tricked the centre’s staff by using a false name and pretending to be an abuse victim.
In November 2022 Dolatowski was sentenced to four months imprisonment. He was originally incarcerated at Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution. There he ‘battered’ another male inmate. Witnesses saw Dolatowski, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall, “Holding (the victim) over a table and punching him to the back of his head”. Warders ‘escorted’ Dolatowski back to a cell and he was subsequently placed on report. He was then moved to Cornton Vale women’s prison.
Only a few weeks ago a serial rapist branded a ‘monster’ was reported as claiming a trans identity and eyeing up a move to the female estate.
In 2014, Jonathan Mallon, who had previous convictions for domestic abuse, violence, carrying a knife and fire-raising, was jailed for life for a horrifying string of sexually violent offences. He was convicted of raping five women and sexually abusing a sixth between December 1999 and March 2013.
Mallon, now 40 years old, is currently incarcerated in HMP Edinburgh. Insiders there say that he has changed his name to Charlene and brags to fellow inmates that he will soon be moved to a women’s prison.
Last week it was reported that a ‘chilling’ sex offender who raped a care worker is demanding to be called Claire and hopeful of a move to a female prison.
50-year-old Albert Caballero is currently incarcerated in Edinburgh's Saughton Prison. In 2019 he was convicted of abducting and raping his own care worker, a 25-year-old woman who was so traumatised by the attack that she has not been able to return to work.
A senior source at the prison has revealed that Caballero recently changed his name to Claire, demands to be supplied with make-up and is claiming to be a woman. Furthermore, he has bragged to fellow inmates that he intends to move to a women’s prison prior to his release.
And now, double rapist, Isla Bryson, wearing leggings through which his male genitalia is clearly visible, simply sticks on a wig, claims to ‘identify as a woman’ and is briefly remanded in a female prison.
A report in The Daily Record has revealed that, in 2021, while on bail for two rape charges and then calling himself ‘Annie’, Bryson enrolled on a beauty course at Ayrshire College. The course involved both class-based and practical work during which the students, most of whom were very young women in their teens, would practise their skills on each other. For treatments such as spray-tanning, this involved the students being practically naked. One former student told The Daily Record, “Looking back, with what we know now, it’s so scary to think she [sic] was watching me with no clothes on... Anything could have happened”.
It seems almost beyond comprehension that a group of young women were expected to be naked and vulnerable in the close proximity of any male, still less a male on trial for rape. This is the Scotland of the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
In Holyrood last year, SNP Social Justice Minister, Shona Robison, claimed, “There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour”.
Immediately after her announcement during FMQs about Bryson’s move, Nicola Sturgeon also trotted out the same rhetoric. She commented that people should not, “Even inadvertently, suggest that trans women pose an inherent threat to women”. She added, “Predatory men, as has always been the case, are the risk to women”.
It’s an old, tired script and one which the SNP has using since the introduction of its gender bill.
Were this not so grave, their stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality would be laughable. The SNP is now reminiscent of Monty Python’s eviscerated Black Knight, hopping about on his one remaining limb and claiming, “Tis but a scratch”.
Can Sturgeon really be unaware how contradictory, not to mention harmful, this stance is? How can she still be adhering to this rhetoric with so many Scottish sex offenders suddenly developing a ‘female identity’ and proving her wrong?
Which is it, Ms Sturgeon? Are Bryson, Dolatowski, Mallon and Caballero really ‘transwomen’? If all the males who self-identify as a ‘transwoman’ must, as you claim, be believed and respected in their chosen ‘gender identity’, then you have to accede that ‘transwomen’ can sometimes pose a threat to women. If you accept that these men are chancers playing the system, then you must acknowledge that self-ID is open to exploitation by dangerous and predatory males for nefarious purposes. You can’t have it both ways. Which is it?
I want to see the media talk clearly about the other cases currently in female prisons also, .. sometimes you’d think this was the first instance! It’s delightful to see sturgeon unable to defend her ‘transwomen are never the risk’ bollocks.
When listening to Nicola Sturgeon saying that the male rapist would be transferred to a male prison, she was careful to say words to the effect that backtracking on placing him in a women’s prison was only particular to his case. She’s been careful to just single this out as an individual event, rather than part of a system, so that she doesn’t have to review her entire atrocious destruction of women’s rights.