Clare Lawton
Clare Lawton
Photo: Cambs. Police
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.
The female victim had witnessed Lawton, 43, and Steel, 38, enter her friend Steven Butler’s flat in August 2011 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”.
The website 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 who are a danger to both women and men.
Not one national newspaper article covering Lawton and/or Steel’s crimes is available online, despite the fact these crimes were 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
Media reports:
At least 5 articles have been deleted from The Cambridge News website, presumably following receipt of the letter from Brown et al
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Court-told-hired-killers-raped-terrified-woman-11012012.htm
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Man-who-wore-stilettos-denies-vicious-attack-17012012.htm
- (Archived here)
Two of these articles are also archived on Gender Identity Watch
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