Reporting Transphobic Crimes

Issue 51
Autumn 2010

 
Please help us to publicise this new service. We can supply posters and reporting forms if you send an order to: info@gires.org.uk

The Home Office has awarded GIRES a grant to fund a national system for reporting transphobic crime. Appended below are examples of the crimes that trans people have experienced.

It appears that only a few victims of such crime report it to the police. One young trans person we know has experienced 60 criminal incidents in the past six months, which include being beaten up and a death threat. Yet she hopes by suffering all this persecution with dignity she will teach the perpetrators to behave better without involving the police. There are other reasons for not involving the police: the fear of being outed in Court; the lack of confidence that the police will deal sensitively and properly with the incident.

Yet we know from our work with police forces throughout the UK that many are fully aware of the needs of trans people and very keen to support them.

TCrime.net enables crimes to be reported confidentially and leaves it the individual to decide what information should be passed on to the police.

We hope that TCrime.net will reveal the true extent of transphobic crime to policy makers within the criminal justice system, enable the police to pinpoint the hotspots where it occurs most frequently and provide examples of effective police responses that will build trust with trans people. The system will also enable us to put victims of transphobic crime in touch with the many groups that can provide them with practical support

Around 30% of people in the UK do not have access to the Internet. So, GIRES has provided both manual as well as electronic reporting facilities. In addition, reporting by third parties and witnesses will be a key element of the system.

TCrime.net is an intelligence gathering and communication system. GIRES recognises that the much more detailed information required to obtain a conviction should be obtained by the police.

Examples of Transphobic Crime

• A 16 year old trans girl, on her way to school, regularly experienced people shouting insults from their cars like, "Girl with a cock", "There's the he/she/it", "Tranny boy" and other names.
• An 18 year old received 84 abusive and threatening text messages within three days after she told her former school class that she had transitioned
• An older boy pulled up the skirt of a 12 year old trans girl to look at her genitals.
• A trans women was discovered at a bus station by another woman who then engaged in yelling abuse, spitting, punching, kicking and trying to scratch the trans woman's face.
• A trans police officer was outed by the press under the headline "Lady Boy in Blue". She was then threatened by a group of young men, near her home; her car was vandalised.
• An elderly trans man was surrounded by a teen-age gang who shouted insults and poked him with sticks.
• A 15 year old trans girl was beaten up on her way home.
• A trans woman was raped at knife-point on her way home.
• An assailant approached a trans woman, after realising she was transsexual, punched her to the ground, undid his trousers and forced her to perform an act of oral sex on him.
• A son murdered his father on discovering he was a transsexual person.