Synthia Kavanagh, a transsexual woman who won the right to have reassignment surgery while in prison, has been moved to a high security women’s penitentiary after a series of violent incidents in which the lives of others were threatened.

Synthia is in prision for the 1987 hammer slaying of a transsexual prostitute.

Prison officials refused to say if she will be charged for the fracas that led to her transfer.

The Edmonton Sun reports that Kavanagh had been given a sex toy by prison officials for “therapeutic purposes”.

Kavanagh won a landmark ruling in 2001 when the Federal Court of Canada ordered Corrections Canada to remove her from a men’s prison, house her in a women’s facility and pay for her sex reassignment surgery.

“If the medical opinion is that sex reassignment surgery is an essential service for a particular inmate, it follows that it should be paid for by Correctional Services Canada, as would any other essential medical service,” wrote Madam Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson in her ruling.

The decision forced the government to pay for sex reassignment surgery for any transsexual behind bars who wanted it.

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