And in shoe-related news:
A trans-identified male in Germany has been sentenced to an indefinite stay at a psychiatric ward as part of his sentence for exhibitionism and violent assaults on women.
Yes, I know. Another entry for our Thing That Never Happens file.
But first, a flashback:
In October of 2008, Klaus attacked a 52-year-old woman, violently pulling her to the ground and sitting on her in an attempt to try and pull her boots off her legs. According to a General Anzeiger report from the time, Klaus fled to the forest to try the boots on, at which point he got “real excitement.”
Don’t ask.
After being tracked down by police, investigators found a whole collection of women’s boots at his home.
A pattern repeated upon his release, and hence a second, present-day appearance in court. But this time, with added kinks and complications:
The 56-year-old man from Troisdorf had to stand trial at the regional court in Bonn for threats, grievous bodily harm and exposing his penis to women on a train. But during the trial, the court had to weigh whether or not to pursue the charges against Klaus for exhibitionism due to his gender identity.
In Germany, only males can be charged with exhibitionism of the penis, and because Klaus identified as “female,” it was initially unclear whether the charge could apply to him.
Because this is where we are now. Or where the Germans are, at least.
Happily, the court decided that, as the gentleman, referred to only as Klaus, had not yet legally asserted his claim of being the opposite sex, the charges of exhibitionism were indeed applicable. And so, another spell in Bedlam.
Still, I suspect those new silicone pseudo-breasts, acquired between stays, may be some consolation.
Perhaps less happily,
Klaus was handed his sentence just one day before Germany’s new self-identification law came into force. He is now entitled to change his legal sex and be placed on a women’s ward at the psychiatric hospital he will be housed at.
A comfort to all concerned, I’m sure.
After all, what could possibly go wrong when housing with women a mentally ill man who likes to hold knives to women’s throats before stealing their footwear, and hoarding said footwear for sexual purposes? A man who delights in stalking women, assaulting them, and waving his tallywhacker at mothers with their young daughters.
A man who is referred to in the German media, somewhat surreally, as a woman, a she-person, despite being identified via the very male genetic material left at the scenes of his crimes.
Oh, and should you be concerned about the whereabouts of all those stolen items, fear not:
The defendant now hoards hundreds of boots and handbags in a large number of boxes; she had even taken her treasures with her to prison, where they were stored.
Her treasures, obligingly stored.
Update, via the comments:
Alice quotes this from the bizarrely misleading German news coverage:
Because she wanted to tear women’s boots off their feet, a woman – then still a man – was convicted in 2009.
She then adds, not unreasonably,
Indeed. And for the women he robbed and assaulted, and the women and girls at whom he flashed his penis, it must be quite odd, and probably aggravating, to hear media reports of some entirely imaginary shoe-robbing, penis-flashing woman.
As noted here previously regarding a not dissimilar incident:
For the passers-by who intervened and overpowered Mr Beekmeyer, it must have been quite strange to see subsequent reports in which this shirtless man was referred to by the police and the media as a woman. As if their own, first-hand perceptions, from mere inches away, were somehow wildly and implausibly inaccurate.
And,
When a shirtless, deranged man – a man attacking a breastfeeding mother and her four-month-old baby – is referred to by the Vancouver Police Department, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun, as a woman – despite all video and photographic evidence – then we’re in surreal territory. And the mismatch of claim and reality is not neutral or benign. It is corrosive. Not least to any trust in the Vancouver Police Department, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun – the probity of which is, necessarily, called into question.
But we live in unhinged times. In which observable reality is something to be ignored.
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