Gary Marie / Marie Dean

Gary Dean Marie / Marie Dean (aka  Dean Gary Marie), a violent male transvestite (who subsequently identified as a trans woman in prison), was convicted at Preston Crown Court in 2009 of 24 offences including six counts of voyeurism, 11 counts of possession of indecent photographs of children and one of taking such a photograph.

He was also convicted of burglary, aggravated burglary and possession of a firearm. Marie had perpetrated a series of offences where he stalked women and girls, then broke into their homes and filmed himself wearing their underwear and (in various examples of euphemistic media-speak) “committing acts of a sexual nature”/”performing sex acts on himself” i.e. masturbating into women and children’s underwear.

Marie, 42, was sentenced to imprisonment for public protection (IPP), a sentence only imposed on offenders who have committed the most serious violent and/or sexually violent crimes. His tariff was set at six years meaning this is the minimum term he will serve and even then would have to convince the parole board he no longer posed a serious risk to the public before being considered for release.

Marie had 63 previous convictions. While serving a prison sentence (named as Dean Gary Marie and a convicted burglar in media coverage) Marie was found not guilty of making an indecent image of a child in 2001, and together with his wife Joanna Marie, he was also acquitted of possessing an indecent image of a child. A video depicting sexual activity with an 11 year old child had been found at Marie’s wife’s address and he was found in a local park with a torch, gloves and a night sight.

The court heard how one of his victims had tried to end her own life after Marie had stolen underwear from her house, filmed himself wearing it and photographed her through a window of her home. She said she felt “violated” and “dirty”. The BBC further reported that ‘following his arrest, police published images of bedrooms Marie had filmed in a local newspaper, which led to a number of victims coming forward.’

On the night of his arrest, Marie had broken into a house in March 2008, and filmed himself in the bedroom of a 15-year-old girl, wearing her underwear. He then sprayed a CS gas canister in the faces of six police officers who tried to arrest him and was found to be wearing women’s underwear and in possession of used sanitary towels.

Following his arrest Marie was heard to say: “I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your underwear. They smell nice.” In her victim impact statement the girl told the court she suffered regular nightmares following Marie’s crimes against her.

Judge Stuart Baker told the defendant: “You have behaved in a way that shocks and shames, which you say yourself, but it has seriously frightened, grossly undermined the confidence and deeply upset the victims of these crimes.”

In 2010 Marie challenged the length of the minimum term at the Court of Appeal, but the case was rejected by Mr Justice Foskett, Sir Anthony May and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies.

See this tag for other trans-identified males who are serving indeterminate sentences after committing extremely violent sex offences against women and girls, e.g. transvesite Mark Lazarus who attempted to rape a 71 year old woman in a public toilet while wearing women’s clothing, and transvestite Peter Steel who was convicted of a vicious rape of a woman in 2012, with partner Clare Lawton, a male who identifies as a trans woman.

**Update January 2018**

Gary Dean Marie/ Marie Dean
Photo via change.org

On 28 January 2018, the Observer reported that Marie, now 50, was going on hunger strike according to a letter the prisoner sent to friends on 17 January; the article initially stated that Marie was convicted solely of burglary, a crime that would be vanishingly unlikely to have attracted an IPP sentence. Although the Observer updated the story (after reader pressure) to include a link to contemporary media coverage of Marie’s trial, both Pink News and the Daily Mail omitted any reference to sexual offending and instead only referred to Marie’s convictions for burglary. 

It beggars belief that multiple publications did not discover similar readily available media reports or were unaware/did not fact check that only the most serious violent/sexual convictions incur IPP sentences. Therefore the likelihood that it was ignorance (rather than deliberate omission) behind such editorial decisions is slim.

In a petition, addressed to Preston Magistrates’ Court and others (and updated on 31 Jan to indicate Marie had abandoned the hunger strike), Marie’s supporters revealed that the prisoner was released (after serving 8 years) to a (male) bail hostel in 2017, and was then subsequently recalled to prison after breaching licence conditions. Since the prisoner must be informed of which condition(s) have been broken before being returned to prison, it seems unlikely that claims made by Marie not to know the reason are true.

Comparison of Observer coverage of Marie’s crimes before & after update
Via New Statesman

A clear analysis of the issues, by Sarah Ditum in the New Statesman, revealed how Marie’s name change allowed the initial media obfuscation over the nature of the crimes. It also directly confronts the competing rights inherent in self-declaration of gender identity.

“If being denied hair straighteners can be presented as a cruel and unusual punishment, one might imagine that housing female prisoners with a voyeur would rate somewhere even higher. But in prison, as everywhere else, the expectation appears to be that women’s safety comes last.”

Photo via Daily Express

Media reports

New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/01/marie-dean-story-shows-there-s-no-simple-answer-how-we-treat-transgender

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/27/marie-dean-trans-prisoner-male-prison-hunger-strike

Pink News http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/27/trans-prisoner-goes-on-hunger-strike-after-being-placed-in-a-mens-prison/ archive 

Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5319993/Transgender-woman-hunger-strike-shes-male-prison.html

BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/8064491.stm archive

Metro http://metro.co.uk/2009/05/22/cross-dressing-burglar-is-locked-up-145130/ archive

Daily Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/102792/Cross-dressing-burglar-is-locked-up

Lancashire Telegraph http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/4390490.Cross_dressing_Burnley_and_Padiham_burglar_jailed_indefinitely/ archive

Burnley Express http://www.burnleyexpress.net/news/sexually-confused-burnley-cross-dressing-thief-remains-behind-bars-1-1695844 archive

Lancashire Telegraph http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/5902808.Child_sex_video_case_pair_cleared/ archive