Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 14:45:21 -0500
Subject: TRANSPEOPLE AS CHILD MOLESTERS
From: riki@pipeline.com (Riki Anne Wilchins)

TRANSPEOPLE AS CHILD MOLESTERS 
 
[We hoped InYourFace would strictly be a news service.   
However, responses to recent IYF press releases have made it  
apparent that a (very) rare editorial is necessary. The  
following represents only the opinions of publishers, and  
not necessarily those of any other contributors to or  
distributors of InYourFace.] 
 
        The recent stories of Sean O'Neill, who pled guilty  
to a single felony charge for statutory rape, and Nancy  
Miscenti, who pled guilty to similar charges involving  
sexual conduct with minors, have provoked heated debate 
within the queer community and media.  The cry has been   
that the community ought not to be in the business of  
supporting or defending criminals, especially sex criminals,  
and particularly not pedophiles. 
 
        This is an important charge, and goes to the heart  
of how little the queer community often understands the  
system of gender regulation in which it is embedded, and  
which adjudicates our lives.  For these cases show the 
outlines of a disturbing pattern, at the very least raising  
disturbing questions which indignant moral posturing leaves  
untouched and unanswered. 
 
      The "pedophilia" for which Sean was convicted involved  
consenting sex between teenagers over a period of months.   
The parents made no objection to the relationship, until it  
emerged that Sean had a vagina, and therefore the  
relationship was "lesbian."  The case was primarily the  
result of angry parents, outraged at Sean's transexuality. 
 
        Although one of the teenagers was 13 and the other  
18 at the time, nonetheless this is the kind of case which,  
when it involves the captain of the football team and a  
cheerleader, is often draws a misdemeanor and a warning.   
 
      Instead, the DA brought felony charges totaling a  
maximum 50-year sentence.  When Sean plea-bargained to a  
single count felony count, the DA requested he be sentenced  
to a minimum 1 year  in prison. Please note: not the local  
county jail, but the state prison.  And note also, the 
heavy stacking of charges on a financially-marginal  
defendant who is represented only by a PD, followed by a  
quiet plea bargain before the judge. No long drawn-out OJ or  
Menendez jury trials for genderqueers: we're pled and  
imprisoned the same day. 
 
        During cross examination and closing arguments the  
DA repeatedly cast Sean as a dangerous predator, a pedophile  
of the worst sort, driven to sexual relations with  
"children."  If it were not for the circumstances, this 
would have been comical.  Sean O'Neill weighs about 90  
pounds soaking wet, barely reaching the shoulder of his very  
petite, female PD. 
 
        The case of Nancy Miscenti draws similar and  
disturbing outlines. 
 
        Press reports filed at the time stated that Nancy's  
PD has publicly "admitted" inappropriate sexual behavior on  
her part.  Yet the "behavior" to which he referred was *not*  
pedophilia, but wearing low-cut dresses, making off-color  
jokes and acting flirtatious.  This is scarcely the stuff of  
which great sex crimes and sexual predation is made.   
 
      Like Sean, the Prosecutor stacked charges, opening 1  
misdemeanor and 1-2 felony counts on each of 5 files until  
she faced a maximum 60-year sentence.  Sounds depressingly  
familiar: stacking charges with a financially marginal  
defendant represented only by a PD, prior to quick 
disposition by plea bargain.  In any courtroom, issues of  
class and privilege are always seated immediately beside  
those of representation and justice. 
 
        It is similarly disturbing that, Nancy Miscenti,  
like Sean, continues to deny she did anything wrong. In  
fact, there is no doubt whatsoever that Nancy Miscenti would  
be a free woman today if she'd admitted guilt.  Her 
attorney Todd Edgington confirms that the judge offered to  
let her off with probation if she would admit guilt.  It was  
her continued protestations of innocence to a crime she says  
she did not commit, and her plea of "nolo contendre,"  
(literally "I do not to contend" rather than "I'm guilty") 
which was cited by the judge when he sent her to prison. 
 
      In fact, it is fair to say that neither Sean's nor  
Nancy's attorney[s] believe today that their clients broke  
the law, much less that they are predatory pedophiles. 
 
        Although a psychological review by the state's own 
representatives determined that Nancy Miscenti constituted  
no further risk if left free, she was nonetheless put away.   
Again, here is a case which might have resulted in a  
misdemeanor, a fine, and probation replaced with felony  
counts and prison time.   And note once again, Nancy  
Miscenti was sent to prison:  not the county jail, and in  
this case not even just any prison, but the state of  
Connecticut's *maximum security* prison for women, a place  
so dangerous that the warden cannot even risk putting a 
transperson in with the population,  but has kept Nancy  
isolated for her own protection. 
 
        Why is Nancy in this particular facility?  Does this  
ill-conceived and blatantly punitive incarceration not at  
least raise the specter, the suspicion, that this judge was  
unduly prejudiced and angered towards this defendant?   
 
      Indeed, the judge apparently made no determined effort  
to resolve critical differences of fact between Nancy's  
version of events and those of the DA.   Nancy was  
apparently presumed guilty from the start.   
 
      Even the statements of the children she allegedly  
"molested" are highly problematic.: as any number of high- 
profile recovered memory trials and child-care cases around  
the country have demonstrated, children will "remember"  
whatever adults require of them and their testimony is 
exceptionally vulnerable to contamination by vigorous  
prosecution. 
 
        When I raised some of these issues with Nancy’s  
attorney, Todd Edgington of the Manchester Connecticut PD’s  
office, he remarked that the current climate made it  
practically impossible to seek a jury trial in Nancy’s case.   
 
	I also spoke to Sean O’Neill's attorneys, Bill Martinez  
and Ilene Bonnet of the Colorado Springs Public Defender’s  
Office.  In discussing cases of this type, where a  
transperson is charge with molesting children, they stated:  
"The disparate treatment between transexuals and 'normal'  
sex offenders makes it that much easier for the prosecution  
to stack and maximize the charges, rather than achieve any  
kind of just resolution of the case.  The simple fact of a  
defendant's being transgendered *dramatically* shrinks the  
‘presumption of innocence,’ impossibly complicating any  
chance of mounting a fair and effective defense.   
Furthermore, the highly incendiary and inflamatory nature of  
the charges themselves, the public accusation of one’s  
molesting children, has the further effect of scaring off  
any of the community support of which transgendered  
defendants are often so sorely in need." 
 
        While it would be wrong to uncritically assume every  
queer accused of child molesting is innocent, we must not  
forget that charges of "pedophile" and "protect our kids,"  
have historically been the cry of a vengeful and hysterical  
heterosexism when confronted with homosexuality.  And just  
as the prosecution may hope, such charges often had the effect  
of tossing a live grenade into a crowd: scaring everyone and  
anyone out of their wits and far, far away.  
 
	And now, as we see such cases brought against  
genderqueers, rather than closing our eyes ought we not  
instead open them wide, if not in wonder, then at least in  
suspicion, at this recent resuscitation of that most  
hardly, reliable and ubiquitous of villains: the "predatory  
child-molester," raised once again, Lazarus-like from  
the grave to trouble and criminalize the lives of  
yet another population of social deviants. 
 
        [Closing note: this week IYF received word that  
last month a wife in the Midwest charged her transexual  
spouse, who just recently began taking estrogen and living  
fulltime as a woman, with molesting their children.  Due to 
delicate negotiations underway and the severity of the charges,  
those close to the case have requested we not disclose her 
identity at this time.  However, she was taken into custody  
by Police, and, as of this writing, is being held on $100,000 
bail.  Unable to afford legal representation, a Public Defender  
has been appointed to defend her.  Members of two Menace  
chapters in the area have sought to support her, only to face  
charges of aiding a child molester.] 
 
 
The Publishers: 
 
Riki Anne Wilchins 
Nancy Nangeroni 
Lynn Walker 
JoAnn Roberts