Transgender murderer to undergo $27,000 gender reassignment surgery on taxpayer's dime
Taxpayers in the UK will be paying $27,000 for a a transgender murderer to undergo sex change operation with the NHS (National Health Service). Unsurprisingly, the news of the surgery has left the victim's family markedly enraged.
Paris Green, 26, will become the first prisoner to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Scotland, reported The Sun.
She was jailed for life after sexually assaulting and beating 45-year-old Robert Shankland to death along with two other accomplices. Paris was born as a male, named Peter Lang in her birth certificate, but has identified as female since 2011.
The 26-year-old initially began her sentence at Cornton Vale women’s jail in Stirling, Scotland, but had to be reassigned after she was caught having sex with female prisoners in her cell, according to reports.
The Daily Record reported that the 26-year-old will have the surgery in a hospital in England after being transported under constant guard from her prison cell at HMP Edinburgh.
That being said, Shankland's family is of the opinion that the state should not have to pay for her operation as "it’s not a lifesaving treatment."
The procedure would cost the NHS a whopping $27,000, according to an estimate.
Green wrote from the women's wing of the prison: “I am having the op, and pretty soon. The letter has went out [sic] to the surgeon asking him to take on my case.”
Pauline Bell, late Shankland's 46-year-old sister, criticized the authorities for approving the operation. Last night, Bell said, "She should not be getting the operation on the NHS. It’s not lifesaving treatment. She took somebody’s life away and destroyed a family. She destroyed my mum’s life and now she is being given this treatment so she can feel better?
"The Prison Service says it’s about human rights – but she took away someone’s human rights in the worst possible way. I’ve got absolute sympathy for transgender people. Let them have the operation. But not her."
Shankland’s mother, 74-year-old Mary, said: "Green doesn’t know the meaning of the word remorse. She shouldn’t get the operation, especially when so many people need vital treatment on the NHS — and they’re not getting it. But the authorities are jumping through hoops for her."
A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: “We cannot discuss individual cases but if a request is made by the NHS for surgery for one of the prisoners they are treating, we would not and could not stand in the way.”
Back in March 2013, Green and her friends Kevin McDonagh and Dean Smith invited Shankland to a party at her apartment in Glenrothes, Fife, where he was brutally murdered.
The murderous trio sexually assaulted Shankland with a rolling pin. They even tied him up and tortured him for hours, battering him to such an extent that investigative authorities found a footprint on his neck.
The coroner ruled at the time that he had died as a result of either blunt force injuries or suffocation.
A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: "We cannot discuss individual cases but if a request is made by the NHS for surgery for one of the prisoners it is treating, we would not and could not stand in the way."
A former prisoner with Green said: "When I first went in, she looked, talked and acted like a woman.
"But she had a spell where her behavior changed. It seemed she was having doubts, had stopped taking the hormones and was growing facial hair again. She was also sexually active and everyone knew about it. She had at least one girlfriend."
Green was known across the prison population for having sex with other inmates, with one former prisoner saying: "He didn’t seem to be acting much like a woman to me."
Concerns were raised last week by prison governors that moving sex offenders who are naturally born males but identify as females into women's prison facilities could lead to weaker inmates being sexually assaulted.
When she was Peter Lang, Green spent most of her childhood in care. However, she officially changed her name to Paris Green in 2011.
In 2013, while waiting on the bench to be sentenced for the said murder of Shankland, she wrote a letter to her mother telling her that she had "nothing to wear in court" and complaining she had no make-up for her appearance.
Judge John Morris told Green and her co-defendants at the trial: "It beggars belief you could act towards another human in this way. You left the victim, even in death, without any dignity."
He described the trio's assault as "utterly depraved."
After being ruled guilty in the murder of Shankland, the trio was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 18 years.
Scottish nationals who wish to undergo gender reassignment surgery on the NHS are usually sent to the Nuffield Hospital in Brighton.
In this case, it would mean that Green would have to be transported over 1,000 miles under 24-hour guard for several days.