Gordon / Nicola Cope
Silhouette image via Wikimedia Commons
Gordon/Nicola Cope, a violent male who identifies as a trans woman, was convicted of nine charges of rape and four of indecent assault on two young girls and cleared of indecent assault against a third young girl. Cope was jailed for 16 years at Stafford Crown Court in 2015 and also ordered to register as a sex offender for life and banned from working with children, also for life. Cope’s offending apparently dates back to the 1970s, with ‘numerous’ convictions.
Sentencing, the judge told Cope “It is difficult to imagine a worse case. You knowingly set out to groom these children so you could have intercourse with them. It went on for a long time.”
Cope, aged 57, had denied all the charges, claiming the abuse never happened and even the defence team stated in court that “There is no mitigation about these offences.”
The offences were committed between 1987 and 2003 prior to Cope undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 2008. One of the girls was aged either four, five or six and the other girl was aged seven when Cope began to abuse them.
Worryingly, the judge also told Cope that “Ordinarily I would consider you a dangerous person, but now you have undergone your sex change, the likelihood of repetition is ruled out”. There is, of course, is no evidence that gender reassignment surgery prevents future sexual offending, and several sex offenders detailed on this site have continued to sexually victimise women and girls after transition e.g. Kristen Lukess, Nicola Florida, Dawn Love
In common with another horrific rape perpetrated by Clare Lawton (a male who identifies as a trans woman) & transvestite Peter Steel, only one media report on Cope’s crimes (by a local rather than a national newspaper) could be located despite the conviction occurring a mere two years ago, indicating the nationals did not cover it.
In an article on deaths of transgender prisoners in custody dated 10 January 2107, the BBC reported that Cope died at HMP Foston Hall (a women’s prison) in November 2016. In 2022, local coverage confirmed that Cope died by suicide in hospital after being found unresponsive in a cell. At the time, Cope was segregated from the female prisoners after being accused of a serious sexual assault and had lost a job in the prison kitchen after brewing alcohol. Cope had also sexually pursued a number of female prisoners in the first year of being incarcerated and had expressed suicidal thoughts because of physical health issues related to gender reassignment surgery.
Fatal Incident Report available here
UK & Ireland Paedophile Database: https://uk-database.org/2015/05/28/nicola-gordon-cope-atherstone/
Media reports
Derby Telegraph https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/transgender-child-abuser-attempted-take-6731259 archive
Staffordshire Live https://www.staffordshire-live.co.uk/news/local-news/child-abuser-took-life-prison-6788686
Tamworth Herald http://www.tamworthherald.co.uk/sex-change-man-abused-young-girls-jailed-16-years/story-26584788-detail/story.html
Tamworth Herald (archived) https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-38338980.html
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