Wayne Rogers

Wayne Rogers (aka Jade), a violent male transvestite, was convicted at St Albans Crown Court in September 2023 of five sexual offences perpetrated against a 20 year old man; assault by penetration, two offences of sexual assault and two of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent. He will be sentenced in December 2023,

Rogers has a history of dressing up in stereotypically women’s clothing/wigs to target men and was remanded into custody at St Albans Crown Court on 5 December 2022 to await trial – presumably due to being previously prosecuted for similar offences and the seriousness of the attack. “He is a sexual predator that picks on drunk men and deceives them by being dressed as a woman,” prosecutor Mark Trafford KC told the court.

See this tag for other trans-identified males who have cross-dressed in order to commit offences

Rogers, 47, had apparently walked the young man to his car, driven a short distance away and sexually assaulted him. The victim did not know where he was but remembers being sexually assaulted, left somewhere and waking up on a patch of grass. The BBC reports that police later found two blonde wigs and a pair of fake breasts under Rogers’ bed and an explicit image of the victim where he appeared motionless, and that the internet search history on Rogers’ phone was “compelling.” Judge Sandeep Kainth told him: “You’ve ruined this young boy’s life. You’re a sexual predator of the worst kind.”

Rogers is the fourth trans-identified male sexual predator to have worn prosthetic breasts during their offending who has been convicted in 2023. See other examples under this tag. Another trans-identified male sex offender, Ali Ay, wore prosthetic male genitalia when convicted of sexually assaulting multiple women in North London.

In May 2020, Rogers was charged with assault by penetration, sexual assault against another man, and possession of a class A drug. Following the complainant making the allegations to Hertfordshire Constabulary in December 2019, they issued a renewed appeal in Jan 2020 for witnesses and dashcam footage at the time/location of the attack without mentioning the key identifying feature that the suspect was a male person dressed in women’s clothes. The appeal did not even mention the suspect’s sex or a physical description.

At the time, Herts police said ‘We do not want to be in a situation where members of the gay or trans communities in particular are being targeted by hurtful comments or actions as a result of this information being released.” Detective Inspector Justine Jenkins then issued further instructions to journalists to “ensure you are regularly monitoring or removing any offensive comments posted on social media”, i.e. avoiding hurty feelings appeared higher on the police’s list of priorities than catching a sexual predator.

Not until six months into their investigations did the police’s description of the defendant acknowledge that Wayne Rogers was “a man posing as a woman” – see appeal https://www.herts.police.uk/news-and-appeals/renewed-appeal-for-witnesses-following-sexual-assault-in-bishops-stortford-1248a archive

When briefing media to seek their help in encouraging any other possible victims to come forward, Hertfordshire Police justified withholding the description, warning that “it is absolutely vital that any coverage of the case in the media is handled supportively and sensitively, both in terms of the male victim and of the LGBT+ community. But the very fact that the police could not ascertain whether the suspect was a trans-identified male or “a man posing as a woman” reveals the problem – if they can’t tell, how would women, confronted with a similar male person entering their changing room at a local pool, for example, somehow be able to magically make the distinction?

In another case involving another trans-identified male sex offender in 2018, Hertfordshire Constabulary issued a press release entitled “Woman sentenced for historical sexual offences against a child” (archived here), and unsurprisingly received hundreds of replies from other Twitter users asking them to name the offender, Gary/Carrie Cooper as a male sex offender, rather than ascribe a violent male’s crimes to a woman. Herts Police subsequently deleted the tweet (archived here) linking to the press release.

In June 2022, the Bishop’s Stortford Independent revealed that, in fact, three prosecutions had been initiated against Rogers at St Albans Crown Court. All three separate juries returned not guilty verdicts but the outcome of the drugs charge was not reported. The details are:

Trial 1: Sexual assault and assault by penetration. After going out dressed as a woman on Friday 20 December 2019, Rogers had a sexual encounter with a man in Harlow before encountering the complainant – a man with a female partner, who was intoxicated after a Christmas party – in Bishop’s Stortford. The complainant told Herts police that during the sexual encounter he had pulled at Rogers’ wig (Rogers is bald) and moved it before saying: “This feels wrong” – i.e. he likely realised that the person performing a sex act on him was male, not female. Not guilty verdict returned on 20 May 2022.
Trial 2: Causing a man, who believed Rogers was a woman, to engage in sexual activity without consent. The complainant – a 45-year-old man who said he was heterosexual – claimed he believed he was meeting up every couple of weeks in a field or a car park with a woman called Jade for “a bit of friends with benefits”. The court was apparently shown Rogers’ social media profile which states he is a cross-dresser. Not guilty verdict returned on 7 June 2022
Trial 3: Coercive control in an intimate or family relationship. The complainant was a third man who had lived with Rogers. The offending was alleged to have taken place between January and July 2016. The third jury acquitted him of the charge on 17 June 2022.

When questioned by a local newspaper about the police/CPS failures to secure a prosecution of Rogers until after he had reoffended, particularly regarding their decision to conduct three separate trials in 2022 rather than present all the evidence to one jury, the response from Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Olivia Rose said: “Having reviewed the facts and the law relating to these [first three] cases, it was not appropriate to join the charges for the offences and therefore separate trials took place.”

Hertfordshire Constabulary’s male police officers have an appalling record of abuse of women and girls. Just in 2022, James Ford was sentenced to 18+ years in prison for raping a girl under the age of 13, PC Ben Pitelen was sentenced to 25 months in prison for making indecent images of children and corruption, Stuart Cheek was jailed for possessing extreme pornography, PC Jamie Negrello was banned from policing after pleading guilty to the coercive and controlling behaviour of a former partner, and an unnamed officer admitted calling his newborn baby girl “an attention-seeking whore” and the family court concluded a “wealth of evidence” pointed to him injuring the child and abusing her mother. In 2023 so far, a Herts police officer, Sgt David Stansbury, has been charged with three counts of rape while on duty and another – PC Ian Farmer – dismissed for domestic abuse and barred from policing. Another “sex pest” officer PC Tom Witherspoon resigned before he could be sacked after several female officers reported him for “inappropriate touching” and unwanted sexualised text messages. In addition, the ongoing IOPC investigation into the serial rapist police officer, David Carrick (jailed for 30 years in 2023) revealed that Herts police dropped a 2019 investigation into reports of Carrick attacking a woman and dragging her out of his house.

*Update May 2024*

At St Albans Crown Court, Rogers, of Plaw Hatch Close, Bishop’s Stortford, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and told he must register as a sex offender for life and abide by the terms of a sexual harm prevention order.

Image credit: SBNA via BBC News