(Daily Caller News Foundation) — Some men have begun identifying as women after being arrested for heinous crimes, but corporate media outlets often refer to them as “women” even if they only adopted their female identity after arrest.
This routine misgendering has led to headlines that portray biologically male criminals as women, obscuring an important component of the story: that the crime was in fact committed by a biological man. In many cases, these criminals take advantage of policies that allow males to be housed in women’s prisons if they simply identify as women, even without undergoing medical sex change procedures.
“In the federal prisons alone, there are said to be over 900 biological males housed in women’s prisons, resulting in massive and ongoing civil rights violations and other torts against women inmates daily,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, CEO of national civil rights organization The Center for American Liberty, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“In America, the punishment for a crime after sentencing should not include sexual assault, violation of faith-based restrictions on mixed-gender cohabitation, and a myriad of other human rights and civil rights violations that occur when women are forced to share very close quarters with biological males,” Dhillon said.
Perry Cerf, who now goes by Michelle Hel-Loki Angelina according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDC), was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 2003 for the murder of a 47-year-old woman. He admitted to kicking her to death, crushing her skull and drinking her blood in a 2003 letter to the New York Daily News.
“Since I have a most unusual taste for blood, I drank and licked and lapped up my fill,” he reportedly wrote.
Cerf, who was referred to as a man at time of his arrest, is currently housed at a women’s prison, the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in New Jersey, according to the NJDC website which lists Cerf as a female. Cerf can be found on the website under “Michelle Hel-Loki Angelina,” but not under “Perry Cerf.”
Some states, including New Jersey, allow males to be housed in women’s jails and prisons if they identify as female, even if they have not undergone medical sex change procedures.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pushed New Jersey to allow transgender-identified biological males to be housed in women’s prisons through a 2019 lawsuit. At least two female inmates have been impregnated by a male prisoner in the state since then.
“There is a very obvious, common sense reason why we do not have co-ed prisons: because it makes female prisoners vulnerable to violence, sexual or otherwise. Unfortunately, under the guise of gender ideology, in prisons and elsewhere, we have seen fit to dispense with the rights of women to privacy, opportunity, or even safety,” Inez Stepman, senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The NJDC did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
In another case, William Tubbs pled guilty to molesting a 10-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom in Los Angeles County in 2014. Tubbs began identifying as a woman after being taken into custody and, because he allegedly committed the crime two weeks before turning 18, he was housed in a juvenile facility for girls.
“In prisons in California, Illinois, and Washington, men, including sex offenders, are [having] themselves transferred to women’s prisons,” Stepman said. “Unfortunately, this has already resulted in at least one sexual assault against a female prisoner, the tragic but predictable consequence of pretending that there are no differences between men and women, or that the definition of a woman is anyone who imagines himself to be.”
Multiple outlets referred to Tubbs as a woman in headlines and used female pronouns to report on the story, obscuring the fact that a male sex offender was being jailed with underage girls.
“Woman who sexually assaulted 10-year-old girl as teen will serve sentence in juvenile facility,” an ABC7 Los Angeles headline read.
“Woman Who Sexually Assaulted a Child When She Was a Teen Will Be Sent to Juvenile Facility,” a Newsweek headline said.
Meanwhile, outlets such as The Hill, Fox News, the New York Post and the Los Angeles Times used female pronouns to refer to Tubbs in their stories about the case.
Tubbs was charged May 10 with first degree murder related to a 2019 incident and is being held on $1 million bond awaiting an arraignment hearing. Numerous media outlets referred to Tubbs as a woman and used Tubbs’ new name, “Hannah,” when covering the new charge.
Richard Fenton, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the United Kingdom after pleading guilty to 21 child sexual abuse offenses, began identifying as Rachel Fenton after being arrested in November 2020, according to The Guardian. Fenton was living as a man up until that point.
In one incident, Fenton allegedly solicited sexual videos from a vigilante group member posing as a 12-year-old girl. Fenton allegedly sent indecent images to the decoy and tried to encourage her to engage in sexual acts with a six-year-old, according to The Guardian, which reported in May 2022 that Fenton was still being housed in a male prison.
The Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, which is sentencing Fenton, did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Alex Ray Scott began identifying as a woman in 2022, two years after being arrested for an alleged 2020 murder in New York City, according to the New York Post. Scott was previously charged with sexually assaulting his coworker’s 6-year-old son in Oklahoma before removing his ankle monitor and fleeing to New York.
Scott was charged in 2020 with the killing of a 64-year-old antiques dealer in New York City, who was discovered in his own apartment strangled and with a slit throat, according to The New York Times.
Scott, who is six feet tall and 190 pounds, is now listed as female in jail records and is being housed in the women’s section of Rikers Island jail, according to New York City Department of Corrections records. The Department of Corrections did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The New York Post and Daily Mail used female pronouns to refer to Scott in May stories.
ABC7 Los Angeles, Newsweek, The Hill, Fox News, the New York Post, the LA Times and Daily Mail did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
