Transgender killer Paris Green is to request gender reassignment surgery on the NHS while serving life for murder.
Green was sentenced to life in 2013 for the murder of Robert Shankland, 45, who she battered to death with two accomplices.
Now Green, 30, wants to be the first prisoner in the UK to have full gender reassignment surgery while in jail.
Plans to let her have the op were shelved three years ago due to concerns for other patients.
Speaking to the Record from behind bars, she said: “It won’t be straightforward and I know a lot of people will say I don’t deserve it, but nothing is more important to me than becoming fully the person I should have been.
“I want to feel comfortable in the shower rather than feeling repulsed. Having male genitalia feels wrong.”
Green was born Peter Laing but identified as female for some time before starting to take hormones in 2011. She remains in a women’s unit at HMP Edinburgh, where she has been for several years.
Green met a surgeon in March 2020 as the Scottish Prison Service agreed to allow her bid for surgery. But the process stalled when the surgeon expressed doubt over security because of the nature of her crime, and then the pandemic struck, ending her hopes.
Green concluded it wouldn’t happen until she gained freedom but now feels that with at least eight years still to serve, she needs the surgery while inside.
She added: “It’s a major operation. It takes you a long time to be prepared for it and long time to recover. I’ll have a better chance of making a good recovery if I have it in my 30s rather than my 40s.
“I’d be able to come out of prison with my past completely behind me, which gives the best chance of succeeding outside.”
She had expected to travel to the Nuffield Clinic in Brighton in 2020 but the surgeon expressed concerns about the potential impact on other patients of having a murderer in the ward.
He was also concerned that Green’s presence might generate publicity that could compromise others’ privacy.
She said: “I was certain when I was 15 that I should have been a woman, so to get to the point where I had a rough date in my head and was meeting the surgeon only to have my hopes dashed was devastating.”
However, Green praised the SPS for its support, adding that most of the staff treated her with respect.
She said: “Three years ago it was the Nuffield or nothing but there are now specialist centres elsewhere, including London.
“I realise it’s not just as simple as me wanting the operation and everyone having to help make it happen and I understand the security concerns because I was convicted of an awful crime, but that’s past and I’m no danger to anyone.”
Green knows few people will have sympathy for her as she is serving her life sentence for a brutal crime.
The victim was tied up and badly beaten in the cruel fatal assault.
Judge John Morris told Green and her co-defendants at the trial: “It beggars belief you could act towards another human in this way.”
Asked why she had taken part in such a callous crime, she said: “It was inexcusable – all I can say is I had a really awful childhood and was totally messed up.
“I was carrying a lot of anger inside me even before I realised I should have been a woman and that made me more angry.
“I wondered if I’d have been a different person if I’d been a woman. I’m not going to make excuses because there are none. I regret what I did and I’m sorry for it every day of my life.
“Even five minutes before it started if someone had asked me if I was capable of murder, I’d have said no way.
“I know what I did. But I can’t change it and I can’t bring him back.
“But I can’t help anyone by sitting quietly, doing my time and not trying to complete my transition, so this is the best road for me.”
Dr Kate Coleman, of the Keep Prisons Single Sex campaign group, said no prisoner should be able to access such risky surgery.
She added: “Green, who is serving a sentence for torture and murder, would, under the new Ministry of Justice policy, be held in the male estate.
“We hope the SPS will similarly place the safety of women at the centre of their revised policy when the policy is finally released.”
The SPS doesn’t comment on individual prisoners.
However, in general it respects the social gender in which the person in custody is living, regardless of whether or not they have a GRC, and it takes account of expert medical opinion from NHS Gender Identity Clinics.
The Scottish Government has been contacted for comment.
Jail after Isla scandal
Paris Green feared she might suffer a backlash and be transferred to a male prison after the Isla Bryson scandal.
The Scottish Government was humiliated when double rapist Adam Graham was accepted as trans woman Isla Bryson and sent to Cornton Vale women’s prison.
But after a public outcry, he was switched to the male estate.
The case focused public attention on the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Bill to make it easier to self-declare on gender.
Westminster used powers for the first time to stop the bill and Scottish ministers are challenging this at the Supreme Court.
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