Marcus Smith/Adam Hodgson/Layla Le Fey

Marcus Smith/Adam Hodgson/ Layla/Leila Le Fey, a violent male who identifies as a transgender woman, was convicted of assault and possession of an offensive weapon at Lewes Crown Court in February 2020.

Le Fey, 40, attempted to steal wine from a convenience store in Brighton while intoxicated at 4am and, when challenged, threatened the store manager with a claw hammer – behaviour that the judge described as inexcusable and terrifying.

However, an hour after jailing Le Fey for six months, the judge u-turned and suspended the sentence as lawyers argued that, having failing to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), Le Fey would be sent to a men’s prison and allegedly kept in solitary confinement. Le Fey claimed to have completed gender reassignment, though court staff were unsurprisingly unwilling to verify this claim.

Judge Stephen Mooney said “Having reflected again upon the impact an immediate custodial sentence would have, the difficulties there are and the intractable problems the prison service would face, I have reconsidered whether imprisonment must be immediate.” He also ordered Le Fey to complete 30 rehabilitation sessions.

Le Fey has previously been convicted of over 50 offences dating back to 2005 including three convictions for brandishing a bladed article in public and described as a ‘sheer relentless pattern of offending’.

See this tag for many other examples of violent trans-identified male offenders receiving no jail time or suspended sentences for offences that could reasonably be expected to result in prison time. In 2018, “Helen” (a male who identifies as a transgender woman) sought to delete two convictions from their record, arguing that the offence – importuning, a male prostitution offence – outed them as transgender. In Australia in 2019, another trans-identified male succeeded in having their conviction expunged for possession of CSA images involving children as young as five years old, after a psychologist testified it was ‘due to curiosity’ and ‘sexual adjustment issues’.

See this tag for other violent trans-identifed males who have committed violent offences involving a hammer, including two murders and the road rage hammer attack perpetrated by Carol Lea against a young woman in 2019.

*Update February 2024*

Le Fey was convicted at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on the 8 February 2024 of four counts of sending an offensive/obscene/menacing message via public communication network.

In March and June 2023, Le Fey posted a series of extremely violent online threats to women’s rights’ campaigners Kellie Jay Keen of Let Women Speak and Helen Joyce of Sex Matters, both of whom have been critical of transgender ideology and the need for maintaining truth and clarity about a person’s sex when safeguarding women and children from violent men, however those men identify.

In one post directed to Ms Keen, Le Fey wrote ‘I live in Portslade, East Sussex, UK. I’m a trans woman and I’m not ashamed to admit I’d be happy to physically kick the s**t out of you and pull your eyes out and break your spine’, before adding ‘If you want to prove your point that some trans people are extremely violent, I’m game’. Another said ‘I’d be interested in setting fire to her house with her in it’.

Le Fey’s (male) defence barrister tried to ‘both sides’ the situation, implying that there is any kind of parity between trans activists threatening – and sometimes committing – violence against women, and women’s rights activists who dare to refuse to accept trans narratives. However the judge replied: ‘The problem is looking at the messages themselves, it is absolutely vitriolic.’

See this Sex Matters post for a timeline of violence perpetrated by (mostly male) trans activists against women trying to discuss our rights in public – the video below compiles some of them. This tag collates trans-identified males who have threatened and/or been convicted of violence against feminists in the UK.

Le Fey will be sentenced on 9 April, 2024 and must not contact Ms Keen or Ms Joyce.

*Update December 2024*

Helen Joyce, one of the women’s rights campaigners victimised by Le Fey, revealed she made a complaint of inaccuracy to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) regarding Brighton Argus coverage of the case as the article did not identify the offender as someone born male who now identifies as a woman (though the headline did refer to Le Fey as a “trans woman”).

The Telegraph reports that Ms Joyce told Ipso, that this inaccuracy “significantly impacts” her and Ms Keen, the victims in the case. In her complaint, she wrote: “It is always misleading for a media outlet to use any of the words “woman”, “female”, “she” and “her” for a man/male person since many readers will understand the person to be biologically female, which in the case of men – including those who identify as women – is false.

But despite acknowledging she was a victim in the case, Ipso dismissed Ms Joyce’s complaint as a “third party issue”. The regulator said that determining Le Fey’s gender – critical to assessing the complaint of inaccuracy – would require an investigation that “could represent a significant intrusion into their privacy”. This ruling is in sharp contrast to the regulator’s decision to uphold a complaint of discrimination by trans-identified male author Juno Dawson against The Spectator after an article had described Dawson as “a man who claims to be a woman”, ruling this was “pejorative and prejudicial”.

Ms Joyce accused the watchdog of double standards and having “bias against gender-critical women”, claiming that Ipso handled Dawson’s complaint differently to her own.

Image credit: Daily Mail