Ex-prison guard says 'predatory' male detainees are 'champing at the bit' to fake sex changes and get locked up with women

A former California prison guard says 'predatory' male detainees are 'champing at the bit' to fake sex changes and get locked up with women.

Hector Bravo Ferrel oversaw transfers of biological males to women's lockups and says they acted 'like kids in a candy store.'

The 2020 California law that let trans inmates opt for prisons matching their gender identity is 'immoral' and 'dangerous,' he says.

'Some of them are in there for sex crimes,' Ferrel, 39, says in an interview with the Independent Women's Forum.

'That's unethical, that's immoral, that's dangerous.'

Hector Bravo Ferrel, 39, says letting biological males in women's prisons is 'dangerous'  

Male-to-female detainees in women's prisons are 'like kids in a candy store,' he says

Ferrel is among the first prison guard to blow the whistle on how trans policies put women detainees in peril.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not answer DailyMail.com's request for comment.

State facilities have some 1,983 trans and non-binary detainees among a total prison population of 96,000.

Some 344 detainees in male prisons have requested transfers to women's lockups.

Of them, 44 were approved and 59 were denied. Others are under review.

Just 15 inmates of women's prisons have requested transfers; three have been approved.

The department says it vets requests carefully and only approves them when it's 'safe to do so.'

The way Ferrel tells it, the guardrails are off.

The Army veteran was a lieutenant at the high-security Diego Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility for men in southern San Diego.

California's Democratic Gov Gavin Newsom signed the transgender prison bill into law in September 2020.   

When it came into effect in 2021, the lockup's 'males started by the numbers identifying themselves as females,' he says.

Guards had to refer to them by their preferred pronouns, he says, when they should have been focussed on tackling violence.

Trans detainees could ask for strip searches to be carried out by female guards, he says.

An inmate at Central California Women's Facility, in Chowchilla, where allegations of rape by a trans inmate caused alarm

Ferrel says some fakers pretended to be trans just to get moved to a women's lockup

'You have females looking at the male body parts — and the inmates are demanding it,' Ferrel says.

It was effectively a green light to 'exploit their sexual predatory behaviors,' he adds.

'You had everybody jump on that program,' he says.

'Non-authentic' trans detainees were gaming the system, he says.

'It was obvious,' he adds.

They were 'champing at the bit' to get moved to a women's lockup, he says.

During one transfer, he said the detainees were 'excited' and 'like kids in a candy store.'

In reality, they were 'monsters' who were caged for heinous crimes, he adds.

After a transfer, male-to-female inmates were a threat to the biological women they shared a cell with.

Many remain attracted to women and do not undergo surgery.

Cases of rape, sexual assault, harassment, and unwanted pregnancies have been reported.

But 'every time a female inmate will try to voice their complaints or their concerns for the victimization, they will be retaliated against,' says Ferrel.

He was so disturbed by the changes that he quit his $157,000-a-year job in December 2022.

California's Democratic Gov Gavin Newsom signed the transgender prison bill into law in September 2020

Demi Minor, a trans woman jailed for murdering her foster father, got two women inmates pregnant in a New Jersey women's prison in 2022, raising troubling questions about where trans inmates should reside  

He now shares his experiences on social media, known as That Prison Guard.

'If you're purposely putting a predator amongst prey — you know what's going to happen,' he says.

The Transgender Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and other groups say trans detainees are most often victims of abuse and all of them deserve protection.

Letting them serve their sentences in lockups matching their gender identity makes them safer.

But women's rights groups warn of rising incidents of rape and other horrors in what were once women-only cellblocks.

A former prisoner in the women's jail on Rikers Island in January opened a case against New York City, saying a trans male-to-female predator raped her after lying his way into the facility.

The Women's Liberation Front (WOLF), a feminist group, says about a third of California state's male-to-female trans inmates were convicted of sexual offenses.

Such 'men' should never be let inside a women's facility, WOLF says.

Women prisoners, they add, should never be forced into cells with biological males because they are too vulnerable — 84 percent suffered sexual violence on the outside, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a research group.

They also point to a 2011 Swedish study, which found that man-to-woman transitioners retain a 'male level of criminality', meaning they are more prone to crime, including violent offenses, than women, even after hormones.

The public is apparently against letting trans women into women's prisons. A WOLF-commissioned survey of 3,500 voters in March 2021 found that 48 percent opposed trans women sharing cells with natal females, while 34 percent approved.