No cases of men charged with rape being recorded by police as female, MSPs told

Police Scotland has insisted there are no cases of men who have been charged with rape being recorded as female by the force.

In a letter to Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee, Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs sought to provide assurance to MSPs on the issue.

While he said claims had been made during First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood that a male rapist could demand to be called a woman and “further traumatise his victim”, the senior officer made clear “this would not happen”.

He wrote: “The committee should be absolutely assured that a man who commits rape or serious sexual assaults will be recorded as a male.

“There is no instance or record on police systems of a male having been arrested and charged with rape whose gender has been recorded as female. This has not happened.”

The senior officer wrote to MSPs ahead of a meeting of watchdogs at the Scottish Police Authority on Thursday, where Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell is expected to be questioned on the matter.

Meanwhile, MSPs on Holyrood’s Public Petitions Committee are considering a petition raising concerns that a transgender offender, who was born male but self-identifies as female, could be recorded as female in crime statistics.

The petition, which calls for the police, Crown Office and Scottish Court Service to “record accurately the sex of people charged with or convicted of rape or attempted rape”, was lodged by policy analysis firm MurrayBlackburnMackenzie.

Lucy Hunter Blackburn of MurrayBlackburnMackenzie welcomed what she said was a “major U-turn by Police Scotland” on the issue.

She said: “We welcome that Police Scotland has at last recognised that allowing sex offenders to self-identify their sex is indefensible.

“It is, however, an extraordinary act of institutional gaslighting to pretend that this is not a significant policy change from their position over almost five years.

“Over that period, Police Scotland has persistently and vigorously defended the use of self-ID for recording the sex of all offenders, including sex offenders, as being in line with its ‘values’.”

The controversy comes in the wake of high-profile cases, including that of Adam Graham, who began identifying as Isla Bryson while waiting to stand trial accused of two rapes.

Bryson was convicted of rape in February 2023 and jailed for eight years, initially being sent to the all-female Cornton Vale prison outside Stirling, before being transferred to a male prison.

Scottish Conservative MSP Rachael Hamilton said: “Despite the Deputy Chief Constable’s protestations, this announcement does appear to represent a significant change in policy from Police Scotland.”

She added: “The Isla Bryson scandal exposed the dangerous way in which the SNP’s flawed gender self-ID policy could be exploited.

“It enabled a predatory male-bodied criminal to access a women’s prison and led this rapist to be described as ‘her’ in government briefings.

“We need to know that this belated victory for common sense will now be embedded in Police Scotland, the wider justice system, and indeed all public bodies.

“The safety and protection of women and the safeguarding of single-sex spaces must always come first.”

In his letter, Mr Speirs offered “further reassurance” to MSPs by explaining that in cases where someone is charged with a serious sexual assault, Police Scotland use DNA samples to determine their biological sex.

He added: “This profile, and biological sex, is retained on the Scottish DNA Database and is available to be searched against crime scene samples to aid historic and future investigations.”

He stressed to MSPs that an offender’s gender self-identification would not supersede “wider policing principles” as he added that Police Scotland “is working hard, with partners and communities, to address the scale, prevalence and impact of sexual violence”.

Mr Speirs continued: “Whilst the matter raised around our procedures for gender self-identification is important, this is not the issue impacting on the safety of women and girls.”

He also stressed that incidents involving transgender offenders “are rare”, noting the Scottish census in 2022 found there were just 19,990 people in Scotland who were either trans or had a trans history.

The police officer noted: “This is 0.44% of people aged 16 and over, illustrating the rarity of these particular circumstances.”