Prison Stories: “Maddison” Hall
Introduction
For decades, and in multiple countries, imprisoned men have been placed in the women’s prison estate because they have claimed to be women. This has been justified under the guise of compassion for such men, and, we have been told that they are too vulnerable to remain housed with other men.
The following series “Prison Stories” will look at individual cases, the nature of some of these men’s crimes, and at any of the known consequences, to women, of their transfers into female prisons. It will challenge the narrative of particular vulnerability.
Sometimes, I will focus on the cases of men who claim to be women, in prisons, but who have not yet been transferred. As more, and more, countries cede ground to the idea of prioritising gender identity over biological sex, and more organisations adopt Self-ID, this larger pool of men are the potential future cellmates of all female prisoners.
If, and when, they are released, these men will also be granted access to every space designated for women in our society.
The following stories will show that many women prisoners have already been hurt, and essentially thrown to the wolves, because of “gender identity”. Some of the facts presented are, necessarily, distressing.
A lot of determined women have been standing up for imprisoned women, for years, and they have painstakingly documented the significant problems with every policy that puts men into the women’s estate.
Some have stepped up as individuals, and some as part of wider organisations. Each of them deserves to be mentioned here so I apologise that my list will be incomplete.
On Twitter, you can follow and support the tireless efforts of
Kate Coleman of Keep Prisons Single Sex: @NoXXinXYprisons Amanda Stulman of Keep Prisons Single Sex USA: @NoXY_USA Jess Williams of Single Sex Prisons Australia: @SSP_AU Kara Dansky @kdansky @ichinita310 @Belstaffie Rebecca Wershbale: @RebekahTake1 Heather Mason: @Mason134211f Professor Jo Phoenix @JoPhoenix1 Rhona Hotchkiss @HotchkissRhona Laoise Du Brún BL @anliathluachra Murray Blackburn Mackenzie @mbmpolicy @TheCountessIE
Many current, and former, female prisoners have put their vital testimonies about what is happening, on record, and you can read some of their words on the Keep Prisons Single Sex website.
There has also been consistent grassroots activism, largely done by women, to try to protect female prisoners. In the UK, a special mention must go to @FemNorthern for this work.
The advocacy of these stellar women is ongoing and vital; there is much more that will need to be done in order to protect every woman in prison from this additional threat of male violence.
Here is the first case I would like to discuss:
In New South Wales, Australia
It was 1987 and just three days to Christmas. In New South Wales, Australia, Lyn Saunders was hitchhiking home, after his car had broken down. He was twenty-eight years old and the “baby” of his family.
A man stopped and offered him a lift.
Later, that same man shot Lyn in the back. When that didn’t prove fatal he put his gun into Lyn’s mouth, as Lyn cried out in anguish, and pulled the trigger a second time. Lyn was left, dead, at the side of the road and it was the owner of a passing gig and horses who found his body, sometime later.
As the Daily Telegraph reported it, in 2010 “The horses were unusually skittish. They shied away from this spot, dancing on their hooves and pulling against the reins where the bitumen ran out and the bush track began.”1
Lyn’s mother, Marion, couldn’t sleep that night in the Australian heat and so she was awake, and on the phone to a friend, when the police came round.
She, and Lyn’s other loved ones, would have to wait eighteen months for his murderer to be apprehended. The name of the man who killed Lyn Saunders was Noel Crompton Hall.
He now goes by the name Maddison.
During his time in prison he began to self-harm and to insist he should be moved to a women’s facility. Authorities responded by moving him to Mulawa Correctional Centre, sometimes branded the “toughest women’s prison” in Australia. It is a maximum security institution for women but even this high level of security did not protect the female inmates from a man like Hall.
An accusation of rape was soon made against him, by his cellmate, in 1999. When his accuser was released from prison she fled the country, in fear for her own safety, returning to her homeland of New Zealand. It was only because of this that the charges against him were dropped.2
Further allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct were made against Hall by women trapped inside Mulawa with him.
At the time of these accusations, including the rape, Hall was HIV positive and fully aware of this fact. There is no available record to tell us if any of his alleged victims went on to contract HIV.
As a result of his behaviour at Mulawa he was subsequently moved back into the male estate.
Hall has sued the prisons department, twice, to claim discrimination, and the Department of Corrective services, once, on the grounds of “psychological trauma”. The latter led to an out of court settlement of, a reported, $25,000 which then funded his “sex change” surgery behind bars.
It was several years later, on the 21st of September 2006, that opposition leader Peter Debnam would claim that Hall had impregnated one of those women at Mulawa. Speaking in New South Wales Parliament he demanded answers from the government. In a response, the Department of Corrective Services insisted there was no record to suggest Hall had impregnated anyone.
This is not because there was no pregnant female inmate. It is simply the case that Hall wasn’t the only man “awaiting gender reassignment” in the very same wing.3
I could find no information to suggest prison authorities initiated any kind of further enquiry to determine the full facts or to discover who the father was.
There seems to have been a great deal of mishandling of Hall’s case. Not only was he known to be violent when he was placed in the female estate but a baffling first attempt to release him on parole had to be stopped because of the risks he posed to the community, and the total lack of planning put in place to manage those risks, by authorities. This included their determination to place him in a halfway house, in Sydney, designed for “highly vulnerable and at risk HIV sufferers and individuals experiencing significant gender identity issues”. A place that was entirely inappropriate for an offender of Hall’s violent background. 4
Not that the State Parole Authority seemed to be all that willing to logically evaluate the facts during its deliberations. During the hearing that, somehow, led to their initial misguided decision to release Hall they were given more details about his crimes against imprisoned women. These details were stark.
They were told of the rape in 1999.
They were told that other female inmates had "stated they were forced into sexual intercourse while in a relationship with Hall”. These are, of course, also allegations of rape although none of the newspaper reports, nor the statements I can find, are willing to name it as such.
They were also told that, in late 2004 "two inmates alleged they had been sexually assaulted" by Hall.
Finally, they were told another woman inmate had witnessed "inappropriate sexual behaviour" by Hall and that a psychiatrist considered all of these accusations, while unproven, to be consistent with his assessment of Hall who he rated as having a moderate to high risk of re-offending.5
Hall would, nonetheless, go on to be released, later, in 2010.
Speaking about her son Lyn’s death, Marion Saunders, once said “the wound is always open”. As well as enduring the loss of her child, she had to watch as the identity of his killer became the only real focus of the media story instead of the memory of her son. Not only was Hall’s sense of self considered central but it was respected, too, with Hall even being treated as some kind of “poster child for gender reassignment”. In most of the articles that talk about Lyn’s murder, and about the multiple sexual violations of women, the writers use the pronouns “she” and “her” to describe Hall.
I rarely found one that thought to even include a picture of Lyn.
At one point, in 2001, and before being released, Hall went to the Supreme Court to have his life sentence redetermined. To Marion Saunder’s disgust and distress, the psychiatric reports that were submitted focused on his “female side”.
One forensic psychiatrist went as far as saying “The successful adoption of female identity and the continuation of treatment with hormones may well reduce her (sic) aggressiveness."
Yet, as Marion Saunders incisively pointed out, if there was any evidence to support such an astonishing claim then oestrogen would be widely offered to dangerous men in prison. She said “Hall did a terrible crime and if dreadful criminals' behaviour could be assuaged by the addition of oestrogen, I'm sure it would be prescribed”
Of course his doctors must know this. They must know this because there is no serious evidence to support the claim that female hormones can make violent men less violent. They must know this because Hall himself offered them the evidence to prove he cannot be rehabilitated with female hormones; he stated he first saw a doctor in 1985 for his “gender problems” and he received treatment back then, too.
It was two years after that “treatment” that Lyn Saunders was hitchhiking home for Christmas and had the terrible misfortune to cross the path of Noel Crompton Hall.6
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sex-change-killer-to-be-free-as-a-bird/news-story/b1fecc9a9a4717607de6e980980e0ba5
https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hall-maddison.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20141231080329/http://genderidentitywatch.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/did-hall-get-fellow-prisoner-pregnant_-national-smh-com.pdf
https://alchetron.com/Maddison-Hall
https://web.archive.org/web/20080620025526/http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0%2C22049%2C20448099-5001021%2C00.html
https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hall-maddison.htm
I know it’s probably just my emotions informing the conclusion that, far too many men think not at all about women, unless they are kinda FORCED to. But gosh that’s the way it seems. Repeatedly. Not one thought about the impacts.