Patrick “Tara” Pearsall is a pathological liar, a repeat sexual offender, an internet predator of underage girls, and diagnosed with factitious disorder.

That is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders as falsification of physical or psychological signs of symptoms.

Over the decades — indeed, still — Pearsall has claimed, among other maladies, to be HIV positive (no proof, but he’d sought accommodation at Casey House), diabetic (no proof) and suffering from chronic myeloid leukemia, for which he’d undergone chemotherapy treatment (not true, as confirmed by an oncologist who’d seen Pearsall once, further confirming that he’d never been an outpatient at the clinic.)

The guy makes stuff up out of whole cloth, yet has managed over many years to bamboozle a whole bunch of professionals.

In 2015, while in custody and for the first time in any official record, Pearsall declared himself to be transgender — he self-identified as female — and was promptly moved to the Milton-Vanier Centre for Women. Even though, as an exhaustive psychological examination ordered by the court, complete with Pearsall’s fat criminal dossier noted, he’d in the past admitted to various individuals and cellmates that he preferred being incarcerated as a female because that meant doing easier time and he feared being raped in a men’s institution.

That was also the year, 2015, that Patrick Pearsall began calling himself Tara Pearsall, taking the name of a former wife.

He would subsequently claim, in interviews with the forensic psychiatrist who prepared a 108-page report for court, that he identified as a female from age 5, had dressed in girl’s clothing from the moment he started school and had been sexually abused by his father because of his girlie ways.

But this was all self-reported history, decades later, with no evidence that he’d ever outwardly presented himself as female, not at the jobs he held, never socially, never to the women with whom he’d been involved (including one marriage and one common-law relationship that produced three children, all removed by Children’s Aid). The only assertion of gender dysphoria comes from Pearsall himself, or herself. And certainly cross-dressing is not necessarily evidence of being transgender.

More to the point, Pearsall is chronically duplicitous. His biography can’t be confirmed — parents dead, siblings who can’t be located. On at least one occasion, a social worker informed the court that, despite his claim she was writing a letter in support of his application for gender surgery, this was “absolutely not true.”

All of his many sexual assaults — save for one, against a 5-year-old boy when Pearsall was a teen in a foster home — were committed against females.

“I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body,” he has said. Which would make him now, as a 53-year-old adult, a transgendered female who preys on females, his repeat modus operandi of misrepresenting himself as a doctor or military medic or paramedic, urging pelvic examinations on woefully gullible young women, his preferred victims the homeless and deeply troubled.

At trial last year for sexual assault against two women — one of them a teenager —Pearsall attended in women’s clothing, wearing makeup, perhaps the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.

I didn’t believe any of it.

But of course nobody has to prove gender anymore. It’s sufficient to designate the gender to which a person identifies, if a gender is chosen at all. Which is proper in an enlightened era. But problematic when the individual may just be trying to game the legal and penal system.

To briefly recap those most recent charges against him (I say “him” because, on court documents, he was identified as Patrick Pearsall):

L.M. was 24, pregnant, living on the streets in Toronto, when Pearsall and his wife — whom she’d befriended on social media — invited her to move into their apartment. When L.M. began to bleed vaginally, Pearsall said he was a paramedic, qualified to examine her vaginally.

“He feels around inside and then he tells me I’m miscarrying.’’ She could either go to the hospital or he could “f— the baby back into you.’’

L.M. wasn’t that naïve. She pulled her pants back up and beat it. And she didn’t come forward until eight years later, after learning Pearsall had been arrested on a similar sexual assault.

S.K. was a teenager who’d fled a group home and met Pearsall (and his wife, a different woman from the wife mentioned above) at a Tim Horton’s. They offered her a place to stay at their motel room.

S.K. thought she might be pregnant but feared seeing a doctor because authorities might take the baby from her. Pearsall, who claimed to have been an army medic — and related to royalty, and formerly a member of Hells Angels — said he could make the determination by examining her vagina digitally. Reluctantly she agreed.

His diagnosis: Yes, she was three months pregnant. Except that couldn’t be because she’d only been with her boyfriend for two months. That’s when the penny dropped for S.K. and she snuck away from the motel at the first opportunity and later the event was reported to police. (Plied with alcohol and drugs, S.K. also believed she had been raped while unconscious.)

Court heard as well about another conviction against Pearsall, in Nova Scotia, from a couple of years previous. Same M.O.: Homeless pregnant 16-year-old, fake vaginal exams, proposal to have sex with the girl to stop an alleged miscarriage.

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What court didn’t hear about was a 1999 conviction in London, Ont. Pearsall had become acquainted with a 24-year-old, living on the streets with her boyfriend. A.B. suspected she was pregnant. Pearsall told her he was both a gynecologist and a reverend. He urged A.B. to have her check her uterus to confirm pregnancy. “First stuck one finger in, then two, then three … and started pushing on my vagina, feeling around.’’

Yup, preggers, but the fetus was “at the end of the Fallopian tube, he needed to push it back.’’ Yet only when he suggested sex for this purpose, and a threesome with his wife, did she start to suspect something wasn’t right. Taking herself to family counselling the next day, disclosing what had happened with Pearsall, A.B. was told that it was sexual assault.

Pearsall’s wife at the time, by the way, told court she’d married the man when she was 17 and he was 40. “He told me he was a doctor and a priest.”

Nor did court last year hear about yet another incident, in Guelph in 2015, when he befriended a teenager on Facebook. The girl, according to her parents, had a diminished mental capacity and functioned at the level of a 5-year-old. After discovering that Pearsall had sent the girl sexual communications and then met her in person, the parents contacted police.

Or another relationship he’d had who was a ward of Children’s Aid, with the intelligence level of a 12-year-old, upon whom he forced vaginal intercourse.

Pearsall has 33 convictions on his record, including those from trial last year. While many are for breach of parole, failure to appear and non-compliance under the Sex Offender Registry, the history of sexual assault is compendious. He has repeatedly tested as highly likely to reoffend and most likely sexually. Never has he shown any remorse.

Last week, Pearsall was declared a dangerous offender but given a fixed sentence of 10 years for the assaults on L.M. and S.K. He’ll serve his prison sentence and, upon release, will spend a further 10 years in a Long Term Supervision Order — a heightened parole-like scrutiny — which will last until he turns 71.

He has apparently begun feminization therapy, including anti-androgen drugs which reduce sex drive in males. He claims to be awaiting sex change surgery.

From the psychological assessment ordered by the court:

“He has claimed he is planning on going through with castration associated with his wish to have gender reassignment surgery. He has not however had this surgery as of yet. As a result, I must consider his current gender and hormonal status when considering risk management.

“This gentleman has been convicted of a number of sexually motivated sexual offenses. Although he presently appears to be compliant with medication to cause feminization, these effects can be reversed with oral or injectable androgens. Thus, in absence of castration, this gentleman’s risk of sexual reoffending remains substantial.”

Put it another way: If Tara Pearsall at some point decides to revert to Patrick Pearsall, male to female to male, the hormonal treatment can be undone.

Unless he agrees to castration.

And for this pathological liar, this perpetual fraud, that may be one gambit too far.