It looks like a textbook case of what Nicola Sturgeon insisted never happens. A transgender butcher in the Scottish borders picks up a primary school girl, takes her to ‘her’ home to ‘look after her’ and then sexually assaults her for 27 hours. Fortunately, the girl escapes.
‘Man abducted and sexually assaulted schoolgirl while dressed as a woman’, said the headline on the BBC News website, for once not worrying about misgendering Amy George, whose dead name is Andrew Miller. The High Court in Edinburgh was told that Miller, who pleaded guilty to abduction and sexual assault, ‘identifies as transgender’ and is in the process of transitioning to female.
Cases like the ‘trans butcher’ as he is inevitably now referred to, and the trans rapist Isla Bryson, who was placed on remand in a women’s prison, tar the entire trans community, unfairly, with the brand of sex offender.
Meanwhile the reckless policy of Self-ID, promoted by the Scottish government under the guidance of LGBT lobby groups, like Stonewall, has done a huge disservice to the image of transgender people. Why? Because as soon as a case like this hits the front pages the questions are asked: is he/she a man or a woman? Will they be sent to a women’s prison? If not, why not? Nicola Sturgeon could not bring herself to describe Isla Bryson, real name Andrew Graham, as a man, even after she ordered the Scottish Prison Service to place him in a male jail. He is still referred to as ‘she’ in government documents.
Inevitably, the First Minster, Humza Yousaf, was asked the same questions about the trans butcher, Andrew Miller. Will he/she be sent to Cornton Vale like Isla Bryson or the paedophile, Katie Dolatowski? ‘I can’t comment on a live case’ he told reporters. It was no longer a live case, of course, and he confirmed that Andrew Miller, would be kept in a male prison.
Under the policy of self-ID, adopted by the Scottish Prison Service in anticipation of the stalled Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, someone like Amy George/Andrew Miller would in the past have been placed, like Bryson, in the estate of their ‘social gender’. The GRR allows trans people to change their legal sex by declaration after three months, with no medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
So far Mr Yousaf hasn’t volunteered whether Miller is transgender or not. Miller opted to allow himself to be called by his ‘dead name’ in court and be ‘misgendered’ by being referred to as ‘he’. In future, once the fuss has died down, he may well decide to revert to his/her trans name. There is no statute of limitations on self-ID.
Is this not precisely the kind of case that feminists like Joanna Cherry had been warning about? A predatory man adopting a woman’s identity the better to abuse a girl? Not according to Shona Robison, the SNP minister who steered the GRR bill through the Scottish Parliament. She had previously claimed there was ‘no evidence that predatory men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive behaviour’.
Asked if she stood by this after the conviction of Amy George/Andrew Miller she insisted: ‘We should not take these cases of offenders and imply this is an issue for the trans community… Clearly this is a predatory man who has carried out predatory behaviour and should be treated as such.’ Except that he was clearly self-identifying as a woman when he abused the girl. Indeed, Robison is being highly presumptuous in declaring that he is a ‘man in a dress’ – the very definition of transphobia, according to Nicola Sturgeon. The former First Minister refused to accept an amendment to the GRR Bill which would have made it illegal for sex offenders to change their gender by declaration.
The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland Bill) remains stalled under Section 35 of the Scotland Act. The UK government has rejected self-ID and believes the bill conflicts with the Equality Act and endangers women and girls. Humza Yousaf has launched a legal action to have this overturned. Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to succeed.
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