A pedophile rapist has been transferred to a Washington state prison. The rapist had multiple convictions, including for sexually abusing a 13 year-old girl multiple times. The reason for the transfer? He identifies as a woman.
The rapist, Brett David Sonia, now goes by the name Brooke Lyn Sonia, and has chosen to be jailed with female rather than male inmates:
Brett David Sonia, who also goes by the name Brooke Lyn Sonia, was convicted in 2005 and 2006 on dozens of charges related to the sexual exploitation of a young girl. Sonia had first initiated contact with the child in Dover, New Hampshire, where he began sexually abusing the girl and photographing the lewd acts, but would later take the victim across state lines to Los Angeles County, California where he would continue to sexually exploit her.
Reports from the case suggest the girl, who was 13 at the time, had been groomed by Sonia. The older man had initially convinced her he was going to help her make money in “modeling,” but later pressured her into removing her clothes and performing sex acts on him while he took photos.
As a result of Sonia committing his extensive crimes in two separate jurisdictions, he stood trial in both California and New Hampshire.
In 2005, he was convicted of 20 combined counts of committing a lewd act upon a child and possessing child pornography in Los Angeles County, California. The next year, he was convicted in Strafford County, New Hampshire, on charges of repeatedly raping the young girl and photographing the assaults. Many of the crime’s details were considered so graphic they were deemed “not fit for print.”
Pedophiles are often outcasts in prison, and male inmates sometimes beat them up. But as Hot Air’s David Strom notes,
With gender ideology taking over in every corner of our society, Brett found a way out of his jam: become transgender, or at least claim to be. Not that you can make an independent judgment because the matter is entirely personal. Nobody but you can determine your gender because it is a mental state, not a physical reality.
By claiming to be a transgender woman, and calling himself “Brooke Sonia,” Brett managed to get transferred to a women’s prison, notes the Feminist news site Reduxx:
As part of the Interstate Corrections Compact (ICC), Sonia was sent to Washington to serve a portion of his sentence in 2016, one year after beginning to identify as transgender. The ICC allows states to share correctional resources, and move inmates to cross-border facilities which may be better suited to their needs. Sonia was moved between multiple male facilities in Washington, and left a trail of complaints with regards to not being given adequate access to “gender affirming care,” such as women’s underwear and laser hair removal.
In July of 2020, Sonia filed a grievance, claiming he was at risk of “male aggression” while serving at the Airway Heights Correctional Center, and requested a transfer to a women’s institution. A court document from the following year names Sonia “a vulnerable, transgender female inmate” who was pursuing the New Hampshire Department of Corrections on the basis that his transfer to an “unsuitable” Washington facility had resulted in a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.
Part of Sonia’s complaint was that he had been placed in a cell with “predatory male inmates.”
As Strom observes, “Sonia would know about predation, given his own experiences with committing predatory acts.” As Reduxx notes:
Sonia’s demand for a transfer appears to have been granted recently, with female inmates at the Washington Correctional Center for Women (WCCW) reporting that Sonia is now at the facility.
Speaking to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, Shawn, who has a close family member incarcerated at WCCW, says he’s “deeply concerned” for the safety and privacy of the women inside. Both Shawn’s actual name, and his specific relationship to the source within WCCW, are being obscured in order to address what he describes as a fear of retaliation from the institution.
Shawn tells Reduxx that women in the facility have passed on that Sonia frequently changes his gender identity, and has reportedly told some of the female inmates that he identifies as a man.
“He was saying that he’s both… Identifies as a man sometimes, and a woman sometimes,” Shawn explains. “I know he looks like a regular middle-aged man with glasses. My relative says he doesn’t look trans at all. His mannerisms are manly, no makeup, nothing to suggest he’s trans … Then another individual approached my relative and informed her that Sonia is identifying as a man. She also said at least one woman is terrified and uses a buddy system to visit the bathroom. She always brings a friend.”
Shawn says that the women inside have been warning each other to “stay away” from Sonia, believing him to be a risk to them.
“I know because he looks so manly, no makeup or feminine characteristics, it makes him more ominous,” Shawn says. “Some of the early transfers were a little more [feminine] with long hair, makeup and everyone knew they wore women’s undergarments… But the ones coming in now don’t even try to be like women.”
As Strom observes, this “is the worst of all worlds–transferring predatory males pretending to be female into women’s prisons. This is not only absurd, but dangerous. Women in prison are often victims of abuse themselves, and being incarcerated with males is beyond cruel. It is asking for trouble as well.”
As Reduxx notes:
Shawn provided Reduxx a list of eight male inmates that the incarcerated women have reported are currently at WCCCW – among them, Donna Perry, a serial killer who murdered 3 women in 1990, and Nonnie Lotusflower, who raped and murdered a young woman in 2007. The majority of the men Shawn says are at WCCW have committed violent crimes, many of which were against women or girls.
Obtaining official information on male transfers to WCCW was recently made impossible by the Washington state legislature.
On March 31, a bill was passed which ended public disclosures on currently and formerly incarcerated people’s transgender status, effectively obscuring the current number of trans-identified males housed in the state’s female facilities. As a result, whistleblowers speaking to press have been the only way to scale the extent of the problem.
Putting biologically male transgender inmates into a woman’s prison predictably leads to other problems, too, such as pregnancy. The Daily Mail reports on an example in New Jersey:
Two women at New Jersey‘s only all-women’s prison have both fallen pregnant after having sex with transgender inmates…It is unclear if the women had sex with the same transgender inmate, or if it was two different inmates. Edna Mahan [Correctional Facility] houses 27 transgender prisoners, and over 800 women altogether. It is also unclear how far along the two inmates are, and whether they plan to continue with their respective pregnancies. An investigation has been launched.
The correctional facility began to house transgender women – including those that have yet to undergo gender reassignment surgery – last year. That came as part of a settlement following a lawsuit brought by a trans woman and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey. ACLU legal director Jeanne LoCicero defended on Tuesday the policy, saying it ensured the rights of trans prisoners were not violated. ‘[It’s] in line with New Jersey’s strong anti-discrimination laws that prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity,’ she told local news outlet NJ.com.
Edna Mahan, the only women’s prison in the Garden State, does not require transgender inmates to proceed with reassignment surgery in order to be housed at the correctional.
As the lawyer John Hinderaker sarcastically observes:
This investigation could be really groundbreaking. If conducted by biologists, it might finally solve the age-old mystery of how women (actual women) get pregnant……
The prospect of incarceration is horrifying. I imagine that a large majority of men, if given the choice, would opt to be incarcerated in a women’s prison for a number of reasons beginning with safety. Until recently, that wouldn’t have been possible. But today, in what we might call the Shania Twain era (“Man…I feel like a woman!”), a transfer request is apparently all it takes…..
New Jersey’s government may have been too blindly progressive to see this coming. But it should have been obvious, since inmates complained about the policy of housing biologically male transgender inmates with women, based on things that foreshadowed these pregnancies, like earlier reports of sexual activity between women in the prison and transgender inmates:
In 2021, two Edna Mahan prisoners filed a lawsuit seeking for the gender identity policy to be revoked, after they were allegedly harassed by transgender prisoners. The women also claimed the transgender inmates were engaging in sexual activity with cisgender prisoners.
