For some reason Australia and New Zealand seem to produce a lot of bizarre cases like this. A woman who impersonated man and then carried on a sexual relationship with a minor received a suspended sentence recently despite being convicted of nine acts of sexually penetrating a child under 16 — which carried a potential jail term of 90 years according to the Herald Sun. And the kicker is that the judge cited “emotional distress” that the convicted sex offender might suffer as a reason for the light sentence.

The woman was 22, the girl was 15. The relationship lasted 2 and a half years, in which the minor apparently never realized that the “man” she was dating was, in fact, a woman. When police informed her of this, the girl had a restraining order taken out against the woman. According to the Herald Sun, “The nine charges related to one instance of oral sex and eight where a sex toy was involved.”

The woman was then convicted of all 9 charges, but was released on a suspended sentence and the Australian equivalent of parole. At sentencing, the judge noted that the woman consider herself to be a man and that serving time in a women’s prison would cause her “considerable emotional distress.”

As Australian victims rights advocate Noel McNamara put it in response to the sentence, “What about the victim’s considerable emotional distress?” McNamara urged prosecutors to appeal the sentence.

Source:

Woman posed as man to bed girl. Liam Houlihan, Herald Sun, December 1, 2004.

The Woman Who Impersonated Man Receives Suspended Sentence in Sexual Assault Case by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.