A transgender prisoner was found in squalid conditions in a “dungeon-like” unit of Limerick Prison, said an anti-torture report.
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) said the inmate, who it referred to as Prisoner X, was kept in near total isolation in the High Protection Unit of Limerick Men’s Prison with minimal access to natural light and ventilation.
The CPT report did not name the prisoner, but it is understood to be a Brazilian named Barbie Kardashian who at the time of the inspection in 2024 was the only transgender prisoner in the custody of the Irish Prison Service.
The Kardashian case has caused controversy in the past due to her history of violent offending and concerns about the threat she poses to other inmates and staff.
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In early 2023, she was jailed for 4½ years for threatening to torture, rape and murder her mother.
At the time, Leo Varadkar, then taoiseach, said violent biological males should not be housed in women’s prisons.
Kardashian was initially held in Limerick Women’s Prison where she was accused of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to a fellow woman prisoner and a prison officer in 2023.
She was transferred to Limerick Men’s Prison following a directive from then minister for justice Helen McEntee.
Last year, she was acquitted of threatening the woman prisoner and prison officer, but remains in the men’s prison serving the remainder of her original sentence.
Kardashian (25) is housed in the High Protection Unit on the D1 wing of the prison where inmates who require special protection are kept. Others on the wing include Jonathan Dowdall, the former Sinn Féin councillor who gave evidence against Gerry Hutch.
In its report, the CPT described the High Protection Unit as “dungeon-like” and said it is concerned about a number of prisoners who are held on 22-hour lock-up and “hence were in a situation of de facto solitary confinement”.
The committee said it was “particularly struck by the situation of a transgender woman” who was “living in squalid conditions with minimal access to natural light and ventilation.” She is kept in her cell for 23 hours a day, it said.
At the end of their visit, the committee members made an “immediate observation” that the inmate should be placed in a better cell. She should be given more time out of her cell and “a meaningful regime of activities”, it said.
In a document responding to the recommendations, the State said the prisoner was able to use “all services available within the prison”. It said work is ongoing to refurbish D1 wing of the prison.
Elsewhere in its report, the CPT was highly critical of the overcrowding affecting most Irish prisons which has resulted in mentally ill prisoners and a pregnant inmate having to sleep on the floor.
It was particularly critical of Cloverhill Prison in Dublin where inmates are subject to a “degrading regime”, including squalid cells shared by up to four men sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
“Taken together, this situation, in the Committee’s view, may well be described as inhuman and degrading treatment.”
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission called the findings “harrowing” and called for the State to urgently ratify the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
