Trans woman in men’s prison seeks move to women’s institution

A sign for Millhaven and Bath institutions stands outside the maximum-security prison in Bath, Ont., on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg

HALIFAX — A trans woman incarcerated at a maximum-security men’s prison is asking the courts to transfer her to a women’s institution until her broader legal battle with the Correctional Service of Canada is decided.

Amanda Joy Cooper, 58, was convicted and imprisoned on multiple sexual assault and assault charges and declared a dangerous offender more than 20 years ago. She received gender-affirming surgery in 2024.

Since then, Cooper has tried to move to a women’s prison without success, and is seeking a judicial review of a decision that transferred her from New Brunswick’s Atlantic Institution to Ontario’s Millhaven Institution in October. Both are maximum-security men’s prisons and Cooper says she’s voluntarily staying segregated from other inmates because she fears for her safety.

Cooper is seeking a Federal Court injunction that would send her to B.C.’s Fraser Valley Institute for Women while the larger judicial review works its way through the legal system. If that injunction is not granted, Cooper is asking the court to order that her judicial review be expedited.

Canada’s corrections agency is opposing the injunction, saying Cooper has a history of unspecified “institutional incidents” while incarcerated and claiming that she poses a risk to the safety of other inmates and corrections staff if moved to a women’s prison.

In a virtual Federal Court hearing Tuesday, Cooper’s lawyer, Jessica Rose, pointed to a policy that requires gender diverse offenders to be placed in institutions that match their gender identity. If there are overarching health and safety concerns, as the corrections agency claims, the policy says the offender should be placed in an institution that aligns with their physical sex. Rose said Cooper identifies as, and is physically, a woman.

“According to (Correctional Services) policy, she must be placed in an institution designated for women,” Rose told the court.

Court documents say Cooper has been living in a “structured intervention unit” away from other prisoners. The documents say she will not participate in unstructured activity in communal areas and only leaves her cell for health care, phone calls and meetings. Some days she spends as little as 20 to 30 minutes outside her cell. She’s held hunger strikes and has been monitored for self-harm.

“I am fearful of being subjected to physical and sexual violence from other prisoners,” Cooper says in an affidavit. “Since coming out as trans, I have regularly been called a freak … and other demeaning names, mostly by prisoners but sometimes by staff members.”

Cooper was convicted of four counts of sexual assault, three counts of assault and charges of forceable confinement and uttering threats. Court documents say that all her victims were adult women, except for one 14-year-old girl.

There have been 73 incidents involving Cooper since she was incarcerated, say court papers, and she was the instigator in 66 of them. An incident in 2018 involved sexual assault against a corrections staff member and more recently she’s shown “obsessive” attachment to female staff members.

Court records say Cooper applied for a transfer to a women’s prison in Quebec in 2024 but the application was denied because she “represented a very high risk for the inmate population there.”

“Her transition has not mitigated the risk that she represents to women in particular,” government lawyer Laura Rhodes said in Tuesday’s hearing.

Court documents say there were 125 gender diverse inmates in the corrections system as of July 2025, making up about 0.84 per cent of Canada’s incarcerated population. The papers say 88 were trans women, with 72 of them housed in men’s institutions and 16 in women’s prisons.

Justice Love Saint-Fleur reserved her decision and is expected to rule on the application at a later date.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2026.

Devin Stevens, The Canadian Press