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Who is Sophie Eastwood? Trans inmate, 36, calls herself an infant and demands baby food and diapers

Sophie, initially known as Daniel, was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 after using shoelaces as a garotte to strangle her cellmate

BRIGHTONS, SCOTLAND: A criminal who changed her gender from male to female while in prison, has made an absurd demand. Thirty six-year-old Sophie Eastwood, who was initially known as Daniel, has asked the guards to hold her hand when she is escorted to and from her cell because she identifies herself as a toddler. She was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 after using shoelaces as a garotte to strangle her cellmate. 

Eastwood has been described as "attention-seeking" and "manipulative" by sources inside the prison and has been living as a woman in Her Majesty's prisons for the last four years. However, it gets even more weird from here. Not only Eastwood identifies herself as an infant but she also told chiefs at Polmont prison in Brightons, Scotland to allow her to wear diapers and have her meals pureed like baby food. 

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According to The Daily Record, the murderer's requests are being taken seriously by the prison bosses who have already supplied her with a dummy. “This prisoner has been difficult and manipulative over the years, which is why she is still behind bars after 17 years", a source said. “She decided that she would ‘trans’ from a man to woman, which is becoming more common in jails these days. But this is obviously something else entirely and the Scottish Prison Service has no protocol in place for dealing with prisoners who decide they are babies."

“Eastwood is a complex person and intelligent but she is pretty demanding on the resources of the prison and enjoys being the centre of attention," the source added, according to The Mirror. "It’s difficult to know if she really does feel a natural inclination to be treated like a baby or if it’s just some kind of attention seeking. Modern prisons are very tuned in to human rights and the legal implications they throw up, so it’s being given proper consideration.”

Eastwood is serving life in prison for the murder of Paul Algie, 22, in 2004. Formerly known as Daniel Eastwood, she has served her minimum 15-year term in 2019. But she is not scheduled to get released from jail for being guileful and has remained in secure conditions. The source said, "This prisoner has already served the entire punishment term of the tariff but she has not been advanced through the prison estate to a place where she can prepare for release. There is no current intention to put her in any open prison regime. This is nothing to do with gender issues. She just refuses to play by the rules or show any inclination or readiness to live in normal society.”

Eastwood claimed that she would have been released from the prison if she had remained a man while speaking to the Daily Record from Polmont Prison earlier last year.

“In January 2020, I met all the standard criteria to pass to less secure ­conditions, except being biologically female," she said. “The prison service wanted me to have a psychological assessment as I hadn’t had one since starting to live as female. After that, I was told by a manager that I would have passed the assessment had I still been living as a man. I felt this was sexist and transphobic. The SPS was implying that as a man I didn’t ­represent a risk to the public but as a woman I did. I don’t think there’s any evidence to support that." 

Eastwood's case reportedly disclosed that she faced a troubled childhood that went out of her hands. In 2004, while living as a boy, Daniel was jailed in 2004 for dangerous driving. The inmate strangled Paul Algie, 22, with ­“considerable and prolonged” force just a month before the date for release from Dumfries Young Offenders Institution. 

The prison staff started to call Eastwood “Hannibal Lecter jnr” as they were shocked to see her act of violence. Although she was ordered to serve a minimum life sentence of 15 years at the High Court in Glasgow, she has now served more than 17. The killer said she realised at a psychologist session in 2016 that she was not a gay man but identified instead as a woman. She takes a drug that blocks the production of the male hormone testosterone. Eastwood has been held in women-only units since 2018, at HMP Edinburgh, Polmont and a short spell at Cornton Vale.