Clare Lawton
Clare Lawton, a violent male who identifies as a trans woman, was jailed in March 2012 for 16 years after being found guilty of rape, inflicting grievous bodily harm, burglary, unlawful wounding. Lawton’s ex-partner Peter Steel, a violent male transvestite, was also found guilty of these charges, plus a charge of damaging property. Both rapists are from Cambridge.
In August 2011, the female victim had witnessed Lawton, 43, and Steel, 38, enter her friend Steven Butler’s flat in Waterbeach with a Samurai sword and beat him unconscious over a grudge involving another woman. She was then abducted and taken to Steel’s flat in Cambridge where they told her they were hired killers before making her undress and raping her.
In his sentencing remarks Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said their crimes had been sadistic and that it was hard to imagine that they belonged to the “same human race”.
Gender Identity Watch details here that – following media coverage of the trial – trans activists including Paris Lees and Sarah Brown, authored a letter to a newspaper complaining that their coverage called Lawton a man, rather than focusing on the fact that Lawton and Steel are extremely violent sex offenders – and therefore that the public need to have accurate information regarding their sex in order to understand these crimes as part of the pattern of endemic male violence against women.
Not one national newspaper article covering Lawton and/or Steel’s crimes is available online, despite the fact these crimes were (at the time of writing) committed fairly recently, and that the long sentences reflect the severity of risk the pair pose to the public.
The Hunts Post is the only online news outlet covering Lawton & Steel’s crimes (archived link below)
See also This Never Happens
Photo via Cambs. Police
Media reports:
At least 5 articles have been deleted from The Cambridge News website, presumably following receipt of the letter from Brown et al. They can now only be accessed via the archived links:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Court-told-hired-killers-raped-terrified-woman-11012012.htm archive
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Man-who-wore-stilettos-denies-vicious-attack-17012012.htm archive archive
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Captors-kept-me-quiet-after-I-called-999-says-rape-trial-woman-12012012.htm archive
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Rapists-jailed-for-more-than-30-years-for-sadistic-crime-09032012.htm archive
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Rapists-jail-termsevere-fair-appeal-court-rules/story-22359786-detail/story.html archive
The Hunts Post article
http://www.huntspost.co.uk/news/cambs_transexual_and_transvestite_jailed_for_raping_woman_after_attacking_her_friend_1_1234890 archive