Vicky Arias, FISM News
Convicted child rapist, Adam Laboucan, continues to reside in a Canadian women’s prison after identifying as a woman, reportedly near the institution’s mother-and-child unit.
In 1997, Laboucan, then 15, horrifically raped a three-month-old infant boy whom he was hired to babysit in British Columbia, Canada. The assault was so extensive that the child “had to be flown to Vancouver, 410 miles away, to undergo reconstructive surgery,” reports Reduxx.
According to the Toronto Sun, “after raping the baby, [Laboucan] mutilated himself and ate his own flesh.”
During Laboucan’s trial, a doctor who interrogated Laboucan told the court that the offender also admitted to killing a three-year-old child by drowning in 1993, when he was 11 years old.
Dr. Ian Postnikoff, a forensic psychologist who evaluated Laboucan, spoke of the offender’s tendency to self-cannibalize himself.
“While in custody, he would turn [violence] against himself, but this high level of self-mutilation, almost self-cannibalization, could be turned against other, weaker individuals, with possibly fatal consequences,” Postnikoff said in the Reduxx report. “In one instance, [Laboucan] chewed on his arm for 30 minutes, ingesting fat and muscle tissue.”
Around 2010, Laboucan began referring to himself as Tara Desousa, and “by 2017 he had been transferred to [a] women’s prison where he became violent with fellow inmates,” who are female, according to the Daily Mail. The exact date of Laboucan’s transfer to the women’s facility has not been identified by news outlets.
According to reports, Desousa is currently residing near the women-and-child unit within the Fraser Valley Institute for Women in Abbotsford, British Columbia in Canada.
The Daily Wire explained that “although the program’s original design was intended for mothers and their children, a National Post report claims childless inmates may access the program and could apply to serve as babysitters or ‘aunties.’”
MALE THREATS IN FEMALE PRISONS
Violent transgender female offenders pose a unique threat to biological women in prisons.
Multiple studies show that men are physically dominant over women, regardless of cross-sex hormone use and surgery, making male offenders with violent tendencies a particular concern.
One study showed “that men have more [skeletal muscle] than women and that these gender differences are greater in the upper body,” while another found that “more than 3,000 genes have been identified as being differentially expressed between male and female skeletal muscle.”
Still another study revealed “the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”
An advocate for women and founding member of the advocacy group, Canadian Women’s Sex-based Rights, Heather Mason, has been a vocal opponent of men being allowed into women’s prisons.
In 2021, Mason, a former inmate herself, submitted a letter to the House of Commons in the Parliament of Canada. In her missive, Mason highlighted Desousa’s violent behavior while in prison.
Desousa “threatened to kill a female guard” and was “found with a homemade knife,” Mason stated.
Mason also detailed a female inmate’s claim of sexual harassment against Desousa and another biologically male inmate, Madilyn Harks.
“One of [the inmates] reported that while in the mother-child program, two transgender individuals with convictions of pedophilia, Madilyn Harks and Tara Desousa, would loiter near her and her child, making sexist and inappropriate antagonizing comments,” Mason wrote.
Additionally, The Star reported that Desousa “flung another inmate by her hair, then kicked her in the face” in a fit of anger.
Reports of transgender women committing violence against biological women in women’s prisons are on the rise. In Ohio, a female inmate was allegedly raped by a man identifying as a woman and in 2022, a transgender female “inmate [allegedly] raped a female prisoner while in the women’s section of the jail” at Rikers Island and was sentenced to seven years in prison, according to the New York Post.