A violent Canadian pedophile who brutally raped a three-month-old baby while a teen was transferred to a mother-and-baby ward after switching to a woman in prison.
Adam Laboucan, who became Canada’s youngest convicted criminally violent sex offender in 1999 at just 17 years old, began identifying as a woman named Tara Desousa and bragged that he had gender reassignment surgery around 2018.
Some time after the transition, Laboucan was allowed to move to a women’s ward of the Fraser Valley Institution, where he was housed in a cell adjoining a unit where incarcerated mothers are allowed to live with their children up to seven years old.
Inmates have reported that Laboucan often threatens the mothers by making suggestive remarks and staring at their children, and that he has even shown up at prison events where children were present, according to Reduxx.
Laboucan’s crime was considered so violent, and his resulting behavior while in prison was so unpredictable, that he received a rare indefinite prison sentence. At his trial, he also confessed to drowning a three-year-old boy when he was only 11.
Adam Laboucan was named Tara Desousa in 2010. He was later transferred to a women’s prison
Fraser Valley Institution, the women’s prison to which Laboucan was transferred
Laboucan was convicted of raping the three-month-old boy he was babysitting when he was just 15. The victim was so badly injured in the attack that he required reconstructive surgery.
It’s unclear when Laboucan began his gender reassignment, but it was testified at his trial that he “exhibited everything from transsexual to pedophile tendencies,” according to CBC.
In 2010, he called himself Tara Desousa, and by 2017 had been transferred to the women’s prison where he became violent with fellow inmates, including an altercation where he “hurled another inmate by her hair and then kicked her in the face,” according to Reduxx.
A year later, a 2018 dating profile showed photos of Laboucan dressed as a woman and sporting a large pair of breasts, and was listed under the name Desousa.
“I am a transgender woman and I was born male, but now after surgery I have become a full woman,” he wrote on this profile, “I have a vagina, no penis, and also have 720cc DD gel implants.”
A photo of Laboucan from his 2018 dating profile where he brags about having full gender transition surgery
Despite his violent past, Laboucan was housed next to the prison’s maternal ward, where other inmates can volunteer to babysit.
Heather Mason, an advocate for incarcerated women, told Canada’s Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that Laboucan had made numerous mothers in the ward uncomfortable.
“One of these women reported that during the mother-child program there were two transgender people with convictions for pedophilia,” Mason said. “Tara Desousa would hang around her and her child and make sexist and inappropriate hostile comments.”
Mason told Reduxx that inmates confided in him that Laboucan was often “stared” at children in the neighborhood.
The inmate also described a prison volunteer event where she brought her infant son, and a prison guard warned her that Laboucan was attending.
“I was told there was an extremely violent sex offender present who had not been in the presence of a young child for a very long time,” said the mother, noting that her son was about the same age as the Laboucan rape victim. .
“Once I was made aware of the sick and cruel nature of the crime against the child, I regretted even letting that person look at my child,” she said.
One of Laboucan’s dating profiles, where his name is Tara Desousa
During his incarceration, Laboucan requested parole several times and was denied it.
A parole board dismissed him in 2010, citing “bizarre sexual behavior” that they said posed a threat to the public, including “gender identity, impulsive behavior, violence and sexual deviance,” according to CTV news.
The board cited Laboucan who admitted to sexually assaulting family members and friends while he was out. ‘Mutilation of your penis has also taken place, as you claim [you] want to be a woman,” she said.
It also noted the drowning murder of the three-year-old, which Laboucan committed in a fit of rage. Because he was under 12 when the murder took place, Canadian law did not charge him with the crime.
Laboucan also exhibited violence and sexual deviance in prison. The parole board noted that he had been found prostituting other inmates, caught drug use with a homemade knife, stabbed a fellow inmate, and threatened to kill a female jailer.
