A notorious “transgender” paedophile has been found dead in a NSW jail, just weeks before he was set to walk free despite sexually assaulting a child and attempting to rape female strangers in Melbourne and Sydney.
Benjamin Charles Jones, 47, a man who claims to be a woman, died at Cooma Correctional Centre on October 30, and the parole board was notified a week later, ahead of a hearing scheduled for November 12.
A Corrective Services NSW spokesperson told news.com.au no other person was involved in the death, which has been reported to the coroner and will be the subject of a compulsory public enquiry,
Jones was given a backdated jail sentence of two years in September by a NSW District Court judge, who took into account his mental health issues, drug abuse, and difficulties in custody due to alleged threats from other inmates, and made him eligible for parole on November 21.
Court documents show that Jones sexually abused a six-year-old girl in Germany, and was jailed for seven years before being deported back to Australia in 2018 and put on the child sex offenders registry.
Then in December 2021 he was jailed for three years and three months, with a non-parole period of just 22 months, by Victorian County Court Judge Pardeep Tiwana for the attempted rape of a woman who was walking home from dinner in Richmond, Melbourne.
Despite being a male and having convictions for sex attacks on females, Jones was housed in the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison by Victoria’s left-wing Labor government, alongside a “transgender” paedophile who abused his own daughter and a “transgender” killer who went on to sexually assault a female prisoner.
A women’s rights group wrote to the Victorian government and then-Premier Daniel Andrews asking for Jones to be sent to a men’s prison, citing complaints from female prisoners who felt “unsafe, distressed and traumatised”, but no action was taken.
In attempting to get a male sex offender removed from a Victorian women’s prison, we have contacted
@DanielAndrewsMP
@SonyaKilkenny
@NatHutchins
@ShingvWorld
@JaclynSymes
@VicOmbudsman
@VEOHRC
@Kate_Jenkins_
@lorrainejfinlayAnd not a single one has done a single thing about it https://t.co/re0ClgwdLN
— Sall Grover (@salltweets) November 10, 2022
Jones then violated his registered sex offender reporting conditions and provided false information to police after moving to NSW, but was given a 12-month community corrections order despite police warning that he presented “a significant risk to the sexual safety of children and adults”.
Just weeks later, in October 2024, he stalked a 31-year-old tourist through Sydney’s CBD and tried to rape her outside St Mary’s Cathedral, after dragging her into a hidden corner and shoving a plastic object into her mouth to muffle her screams.
CCTV published by news.com.au shows Jones, who had a bushy beard at the time, following the woman for about 20 minutes after she left a nightclub.
Jones declared “I identify as transgender and queer … I had nothing to do with it” when he faced court after his arrest, but eventually pleaded guilty to attempted sexual intercourse without consent and stalking.
During sentencing the court heard that Jones was homeless at the time of the attack, and had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He told a psychiatrist he lived in an “astral world”, and that his “sex spirit” had made a deal with the devil to force him to “engage in sex rituals”, but also claimed that since being medicated he was “confused and bewildered” by his behaviour.
Judge Troy Anderson took into account Jones’s schizophrenia, gender dysphoria, depression and anxiety diagnoses, and that he spent nearly two years in custody in isolation since his arrest due to threats from other inmates, which the judge said would make a custodial sentence “weigh more heavily” on him.
“It is certainly a difficult sentencing exercise given the appalling nature of the conduct itself. But the subjective case of the offender is powerful,” the judge said.
Header image: Left, Benjamin Jones. Right, Benjamin Jones caught on CCTV while he stalked his victim through Sydney (NSW Police).
