Offender Will Stay At Purdy Prisoner Of ‘Debatable’ Gender Had Asked To Go To Male Facility

State corrections officials have decided an all-female prison is the best place to hold a convicted child molester who says she’s a man trapped inside a woman’s body.

Chris Wheatley has been at the Washington Corrections Center for Women at Purdy since early December.

Benton County Superior Court Judge Carolyn Brown, who sentenced Wheatley, had asked state officials to consider an all-male facility. Brown said Wheatley’s gender is “debatable.”

Prison officials disagree. Wheatley will remain housed with female offenders as she makes her way through the system, Gary Clarke, the department’s acting chief of classification and treatment, said Thursday.

“We go by the anatomy - if they have the anatomy of a male, they are housed in a male institution and vice versa,” Clarke said.

In November, Brown sentenced Wheatley to 22 months in prison for third-degree child molestation.

Prosecutors said Wheatley, who has grown a goatee and takes male hormones, dated and fondled a 14-year-old Richland girl who was unaware of Wheatley’s true gender.

In a Franklin County case earlier in 1997, Wheatley pleaded guilty to third-degree rape of child. Prosecutors said Wheatley used a “strap-on penis impersonation device” to trick a 15-year-old girl into having sex with her several times.

Wheatley’s lawyer, Bob Thompson, said Thursday that keeping his client in an all-woman facility defies common sense.

“The allegations against Chris is that he was doing improper sexual (behavior) against females,” Thompson said. “It just seems odd to me that if this is the sort of behavior you are trying to prevent … it seems odd that you would put someone like that in an all-female facility.”

Wheatley’s stay at the Purdy prison has so far presented no major problems, prison spokeswoman Patricia Wachtel said.

“She is not segregated in any way,” Wachtel said. “She seems not to have any infraction issues. She seems to be a good inmate.”

Wheatley’s release is set for December, Clarke said.

Thompson said his client was taking male hormones while in the Benton County Jail. Wheatley had been kept there in isolation since last April before being moved to Purdy.

Thompson said he was uncertain if his client is allowed to take hormones in the women’s facility.

Prison officials, citing doctor-patient confidentiality rules, wouldn’t discuss Wheatley’s medications.

Thompson said it’s Wheatley’s ultimate goal to have a sex change operation and the hormones are part of “embarking on that journey.”