NOW STURGEON FACES SECOND TRANS STORM

● Another transgender convict set to transfer to women’s jail ● JK Rowling and SNP’s own politicians lead new backlash

NICOLA Sturgeon was at the centre of a second transgender storm last night after it was revealed another dangerous offender is to be moved to a women’s prison.

Amid a huge public backlash, the First Minister was last week forced into an embarrassing U-turn to remove double rapist Isla Bryson from Cornton Vale women’s prison.

Now she is under intense pressure to block all transgender offenders from women’s prisons after a second inmate, Tiffany Scott – who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns and later attacked female prison officers – was ‘rubber-stamped’ to move to a women’s prison.

Scott has been described as one of ‘the most menacing’ inmates held by the Scottish Prison Service. Last night Harry Potter author and feminist campaigner JK Rowling tweeted: ‘A “highly disturbed prisoner [who] has attacked female staff during time in prison, has admitted stalking a young girl and has been one of the most menacing people inside Scottish jails” is to be moved to a women’s prison.’

The astonishing cases of Bryson and Scott

AFORMER girlfriend of the man who became transgender rapist Isla Bryson has revealed the sex offender is the father of her five-year-old child. The woman first met Bryson online while the offender was known as Adam Graham, but ended their relationship after she found out her lover was having flings with other women behind her back. It was then that she discovered she was pregnant, but her partner of five months, who decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial for two counts of rape, wanted nothing to do with her or the baby – and has never helped her with their child’s upbringing in any way.

Now thought to be the first trans woman convicted of raping women in Scotland, her ex-boyfriend has been at the centre of an escalating political row since being found guilty of double rape last Tuesday and being transferred to a female-only prison to await sentencing next month.

Three days ago, following a public backlash, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was forced into a humiliating

U-turn when she told MSPs at

Holyrood that Bryson would be transferred out of Cornton Vale women’s prison and into a male unit at HMP Edinburgh.

Last night, speaking for the first time, the mother of Bryson’s child hit out at the mistakes made by

Ms Sturgeon and the justice system in allowing themselves to be

‘manipulated by a liar’.

Alison, whose real name cannot be revealed for legal reasons, said:

‘I think it was shocking to put

Bryson in a women’s prison in the first place. The man I know as

Adam is manipulative when it comes to women and a very real danger to anyone in a vulnerable state, which many female prisoners are in there.

‘It could have had terrible consequences. It’s a pity it was only after public pressure that Nicola Sturgeon saw sense. Adam needs to be in a male prison, whatever he says he is.’

She added: ‘I was one of the first people Adam told when he decided to transition to a woman and I definitely think it was driven by the fact he was facing two rape charges as a man.

‘He was never violent to me when we were together but we had a healthy sex life and he never once said he wanted to be a woman. It’s just one big con.’

The pair first met on the dating website Badoo in early 2017 following the breakdown of Bryson’s marriage to Shonna Graham, who last week publicly mocked his move to become a woman and described it as a ‘sham’ to get an easier time in prison.

Recalling their first meeting,

Alison said: ‘I thought he was really nice, good-looking and easy to talk to. He said he suffered from anxiety and I suppose I felt sorry for him. He told me he was getting divorced. We chatted for a few weeks before I finally agreed to meet him at his flat in Clydebank.

‘But I soon found out he was quite a jealous person and was always wanting to know who I was texting.

It wasn’t me who was cheating on him, though. It wasn’t long before I realised that he was keeping conversations going with multiple women behind my back while we were together.

‘He was always really secretive about it, thinking I wouldn’t notice the constant messages lighting up his phone. He even tried chatting up one of my younger female relatives, thinking I wouldn’t find out. I found out too late that I was dating a real creep.’

The final straw came when she spotted, from the bus stop across the road, a woman arriving at the flat just ten minutes after she left.

She added: ‘I knew she was there to see Adam, so I went over to confront them, knocking at the door.

He wouldn’t let me in, just standing there holding the door and looking guilty, and we ended up having a blazing row. I told him it was over and that I wanted my things back, before storming off.

‘It was only a few weeks later that I discovered I was pregnant. I felt really stupid for getting caught out like that by someone like him. When I told him, he wasn’t interested. I think he was already seeing someone else by then.

‘When our daughter was six weeks old, I decided to take her to Clydebank so he could see her for the first time. I shouldn’t have bothered. He just looked at her before agreeing to hold her for a few minutes and then we left. That was the last time I saw “Adam”.’

Three years ago, however, she suddenly got a call out of the blue from him saying ‘he had something to tell her’.

By then, Bryson had committed two rapes, in Clydebank and Glasgow in 2016 and 2019, and knew the cases were going to trial at the High Court.

However, her former boyfriend mentioned neither in his phone call,

It just all seemed weird, and hard to take him seriously

instead telling Alison he had decided to have a ‘sex change’ because he wanted to be a woman.

Alison recalled: ‘I nearly fell over laughing and said something like, “Have you gone mad?”

‘But he told me to stop laughing at him and that he now wanted to be called Annie – later changed to Isla – and that he was serious. He even sent me a copy of a printed form he had filled out, which appeared to show he was about to apply to begin the process.

‘He said it was what he wanted and that it could take years to get the surgery but he was willing to wait. He told me he had been going round charity shops, buying women’s clothes to wear and he’d managed to buy a nice wig in one.

‘It just all seemed weird, and hard to take him seriously.’

She added: ‘I’d no idea what he’d been up to in between because he had no interest in our baby, didn’t even ask about her – it was all about him. I’m disgusted now to think he

was facing two rape charges. I remember when we first met, he told me he’d been accused of rape in 2016 but that nothing more had come of it.

‘He swore he hadn’t done anything wrong and that he was the one who had been attacked.

‘He convinced me to believe him, because he’s very persuasive, and I thought the police must know what they’re doing and if they’d had a case against him, there would have been a court hearing by that point. If I’d known it was actually true, I would’ve had nothing to do with him ever.’

On Friday, it was revealed that, in 2021, the double rapist enrolled for a beauty course at Ayrshire College’s Kilwinning Campus, while awaiting trial.

Former students claimed they often had to take their clothes off to act as models for demonstrations of spray-tanning and waxing, while the rapist – who spent three months there before leaving – looked on.

Ayrshire College has since claimed it had ‘no prior knowledge of this individual being charged with any offences’.

At the High Court in Glasgow, judge Lord Scott has warned Bryson that a ‘significant custodial sentence’ is inevitable when she returns for sentencing in three weeks.

But where that sentence should be served has been the subject of heated debate, with concerns raised about the safety of other women in the female prison estate were Bryson to be placed there.

The Scottish parliament passed legislation last month aimed at making it easier for people to change their legally recognised sex, but Ms Sturgeon has said the changes did not play any part in the Bryson case.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill has been blocked by the UK Government over its potential impact on equalities laws that apply across Scotland, England and Wales.

On Thursday, however, hours before Bryson’s move to HMP Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon told MSPs at First Minister’s Questions: ‘I don’t think it’s possible to have a rapist within a women’s prison.’

A day earlier, the rapist’s estranged wife, Mrs Graham, 31, accused Bryson of ‘bullsh ***** g the authorities’, adding: ‘Never once did he say anything to me about feeling he was in the wrong body or anything.’

Last night, Alison said she agreed that Bryson was ‘trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes’.

As for their young daughter, she says she has never told the child who her real father is and she never will.

Alison added: ‘Her father is dead to her in more ways than one. Adam was never interested and has never been part of her life. I want to keep it that way.

‘We’ve both had a lucky escape. I hope he gets the sentence he deserves – and whatever it is, that he doesn’t get to take the easy way out by being allowed to serve it around women.’