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The Grand Valley federal prison for women received its first male inmate last week, a 54-year-old man who is still a fully functional male who hasn’t yet undergone re-assignment surgery.

While it isn’t a Canadian first, it is for the 215-bed prison in Kitchener, Ont., about 100 kilometres from Toronto.

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And it appears that Correctional Services Canada (CSC) is handling the challenge posed by Christopher Bellmore, who now identifies as female, with its usual dexterity.

Correctional officers at Grand Valley, for instance, have been told they must conduct two-stage strip searches on Bellmore.

As CSC directives note, “a male officer will conduct the strip search of the bottom half of Offender Bellmore and the female staff will strip search the top half.”

This is in direct contradiction of CSC policy, which says that male guards can’t strip-search females.

Bellmore was convicted in 2002 of two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of her former in-laws, whom she believed had molested her then-wife and daughter.