Brandon/Chloe Walker
Brandon/Chloe Walker (aka Steven/James Walker, Jamie Thornton), a violent male who identifies as a trans woman, was convicted of unknown sex offences against a child in 2016 and placed on the sex offenders’ register. Since 2006 Walker has received 22 convictions for 44 offences, including sexually assaulting a boy under 13, sexual activity with a girl under 16 and assault.
In July 2018 Walker, 29, was convicted of breaching the sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) imposed at sentencing in 2016 and was sent to prison for 10 months.
Shortly before release from HMP Peterborough, Walker pleaded guilty to a second breach of the SHPO at Northampton Magistrates Court in March 2019. A condition of the SHPO was to register all pseudonyms used online with the police in advance of using them. However, during a visit from the police in 2018, Walker was found to be using the pseudonym Jamie Thornton to contact a female victim on Facebook, presumably to hide the fact of being a convicted sex offender. The 18 week prison sentence was suspended for a year.
In addition to telling the court of Walker’s use of drugs, mental health issues and autism as mitigation, Walker’s lawyer said “She’d been living a socially reclusive life with not many friends, and social media was the only place she could find some company.” As if it’s entirely expected that male sex offenders (with a specific order from the court preventing them doing so) are entitled to alleviate their problems by imposing on women and girls (with no idea they are speaking to a sex offender) for their emotional labour.
Somewhat farcically, Walker was referred to as Mr Walker for the first half of the hearing (presumably as Walker has not obtained a GRC and the concomitant right to be recorded as female on official documents), until the judge told the prosecutor to refer to Walker using feminine pronouns. So Walker was convicted of using a self-declared (false) identity online to access women, but the prosecutor is impelled to participate in a sex offender’s self-declared gender identity in court.
A Liberal Democrat county councillor (who wasn’t in court) challenged the reporter (who had been in court) on the story – archived here – arguing
that the offender’s transgender status is irrelevant, despite this being intrinsic to the offending pattern. Plus the fact that 98% of sex offences against children are committed by males, making biological sex overwhelmingly relevant.
Predictably, other men then piled in, ever keen to obfuscate male-pattern sex offending and imply a woman was responsible.
*Update May 2019*
Within seven days of release, Walker had failed to comply with terms imposed by the court, despite a taxpayer-funded package of housing and a job offer.
Appearing again before Northampton Magistrates Court on May 9, Walker admitted the breaches and must now serve the original suspended 18-week prison sentence along with a further 20 weeks for the two new offences.
*Update November 2020*
Walker was released from prison in January 2020 subject to a sexual harm prevention order. By May 2020, Walker had failed to maintain contact with the police and was subsequently convicted of 5 offences on the same day under two different names and separate case numbers, thereby illustrating the potential for confusion and obfuscation regarding name changes for transgender sex offenders being monitored in the community. See also Alan/Alannah Morgan who similarly appeared in court on the same day to be sentenced for a series of violent crimes and was described as both a man and a “woman” simultaneously.
Four months after release from prison, in May 2021, Walker, 30, had sent a text message refusing communication with a supervising police officer then blocked him, saying he was changing his name back to Brandon Walker. The Northamptonshire Telegraph reported that when police knocked at Walker’s door in Wellingborough a few days later they found the house abandoned, left in ‘squalor’. Along with a younger girlfriend, and calling themselves Ian and Kirsty, Walker had run off to a small Derbyshire village to sleep rough. Kind strangers there who had been helping the pair, who they believed to be homeless, saw a missing person’s appeal for the young woman and alerted Northamptonshire Police.
The five offences were two counts of failing to comply with the requirements of the sex offenders’ register (under the name Chloe Walker) and two breaches of a sexual harm prevention order (under the name Brandon Walker) and one of failing to tell police of a new phone number.
Walker was sentenced to ten months in prison for all five offences at Northampton Crown Court on 22 October, 2020.
Walker is apparently now employed full-time in prison as a wing cleaner at HMP Peterborough and had become a diversity representative holding weekly meetings and visits other prisoners to offer them support.
Photo credit: Northants Telegraph
Media reports
Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8911015/Transgender-sex-offender-appeared-court-man-woman-occasion-jailed.html archive
Northants Telegraph
https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/crime/wellingborough-sex-offender-sent-back-to-prison-just-one-week-after-release-1-8939497 archive
Northampton Chronicle https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/northants-transgender-sex-offender-used-fake-identity-to-speak-to-woman-on-facebook-1-8869416 archive
Northants Telegraph https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/northants-transgender-sex-offender-used-fake-identity-to-speak-to-woman-on-facebook-1-8869416 archive
Northants Telegraph https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/crime/wellingborough-sex-offender-racks-up-forty-ninth-offence-after-blocking-a-supervising-police-officer-and-disappearing-to-derbyshire-3020717 archive