Samantha Norris

Samantha Norris, a male who identifies as a transgender woman, was convicted at at Southampton Crown Court in March 2024 of three counts of making indecent photographs of a child, possession of a prohibited image of a child, and possession of extreme pornographic images depicting sexual assault of an animal. Norris was sentenced to two years in prison and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

At sentencing, the judge noted that Norris,56, presented a high risk of harm to children having written notes describing sexual fantasies involving a four-and-a-half-year-old child and a “New Year’s resolution to have sex with a girl under 10”.

The images included children aged as young as three with others showing children aged about six in “distress and pain”. Norris had 16,000 images of children including about 2,000 still and 121 moving images of category A seriousness.

Norris had earlier been acquitted by a jury of two charges of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child (i.e. masturbating), alleged to have taken place on July 27, 2023 and a further two charges of indecent exposure. The prosecution had claimed that Norris had “exposed her [sic] penis” deliberately to two young girls through the window of her [sic] flat on two consecutive days. The court heard that “The defendant, Miss [sic]Norris, now transitioning, she [sic] has a penis, was standing there fully naked, on the first day almost glorifying in that nudity over quite a period of time knowing the girls were there and drawing attention to herself. And the next day when she [sic] saw them again and she [sic] was naked, glorying in her [sic] nudity, almost posturing, definitely manipulating her [sic] penis with these two young girls being able to see all this.”

See this tag which collates a number of trans-identified males whose sex offending involved public masturbation. Several committed the acts at windows of their homes, i.e. intending for passing women and children to see them, including:

Andrew McNab/Chloe Thompson who stood naked at a window making thrusting movements with his hips towards passing children and committed sex acts with a wheelie bin
Luke Proctor who was “trampolining” on his bed in women’s underwear, masturbating as a female neighbour passed
Barry Mason who danced naked on the roof of his house in women’s underwear, inserting a sex toy in his anus and mouth as a woman passed by

When originally charged with indecent exposure in August 2023, Norris didn’t enter a plea for the charges relating to indecent images of children. After the jury returned its not guilty verdicts for indecent exposure, Norris then pleaded guilty to the indecent images charges. At sentencing, the judge scathingly remarked that “It’s pretty blatant to me that you decided not to enter guilty pleas (earlier) as these pleas would have gone in front of the jury of the other matters.”

The Hampshire police statement detailing the charges made against Norris, didn’t mention the sex of the defendant at all, or use sexed pronouns – i.e they know Norris is male but won’t say so.

Fair Play For Women – a feminist group who have repeatedly challenged media outlets and IPSO to report the sex of defendants accurately – noted conflicting regional news stories where one says Samantha Norris is a man (navigate to 12 August 2023 to see the post) while another says Norris is female and a woman.

Media coverage mostly reflected this obfuscation referring to Norris simply as “a person” or “individual” or a “Ringwood resident” but some outlets, such as Portsmouth News inexplicably went with “Female Samantha Norris who allegedly flashed at two young girls near Hampshire school…” even though indecent exposure/public masturbation is overwhelmingly a male crime. At sentencing Portsmouth News went with ‘Transgender, 56, faces jail for child pornography after being cleared of “exposing her penis” to girls‘. The Bournemouth Echo may have later changed their initial coverage as the same story is titled “Samantha Norris accused of indecent exposure against girls” on the Echo site but as “Woman accused of indecent exposure against two young girls” via Yahoo News.

The feminist news service Reduxx also noted the anomaly in how the Hampshire police normally report the sex of the defendant in media releases detailing arrests and convictions and therefore contacted the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary to clarify; the External Engagement Manager stated that Norris “identifies as a woman.”

By the time Norris was sentenced some – but not all – media outlets dropped the farce of calling Norris a woman or female, using e.g. “Charity shop worker” in headlines. Some also drew attention to the ridiculous oxymoron of “her penis”.

Image credit: Hampshire Constabulary via Salisbury Journal