HERE
July 2, 2007
Hate-crime trial has a weird twist
A teenager is accused of attacking a transsexual he had sex with.
BY KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
The Palm Beach Post
The two strangers met outside a bar on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach.
One was a 17-year-old high school student out with a friend. The other was an attractive 39-year-old from Ohio in capri pants and a silky spaghetti-strap top.
The teen says that the woman got into their car, and performed oral sex on him in the back seat while his friend drove. They ended up near a lifeguard tower on the island of Palm Beach after midnight. According to the 17-year-old, the woman was on top of him when he saw something he didn’t expect under her bikini bottom.
Just as they were about to have sex, he says, he saw the woman was actually a pre-operative transsexual. She already had breast implants, but her other surgery is not scheduled until later this year.
She denies any sexual activity with the teen and has a different story.
TRANSSEXUAL BEATEN
But a witness saw what happened next: the teen shouted for help, dragged her through the sand, beat her head against the lifeguard stand and punched out her front teeth.
The teen goes on trial this week in juvenile court, facing a first-degree felony hate-crime charge that may be without precedent in Palm Beach County.
Assistant State Attorney Renelda Mack, chief of the civil rights unit, said she does not remember another hate-crime case here with a transsexual victim.
The teen, now 18 and attending summer school, has been under house arrest since the beating in the early morning of July 29, 2006. A juvenile judge will decide if he is guilty and what punishment he will face, if any.
The teen’s attorney, John Brewer, will argue self-defense. Brewer said the 39-year-old threatened to kill him and his family if he told anyone what happened.
A mechanic from Lake Worth was on the beach that night with friends. He said in a deposition that he was sitting on top of the lifeguard tower when the teen, wearing only boxer shorts, came up and asked for help.
The kid, who looked no older than 18, ”was hysterical, freaking out, crying, upset,” the witness said.
“He said he picked up a girl, he thought it was a girl — turns out it was a guy.”
The man had tried to rape him, the teen told the mechanic.
TOLD TO GO HOME
The witness said he suggested that the boy go home and not tell anyone. But about half an hour later, the kid returned, he said, dragging what looked to be a topless man down the beach by the hand. He screamed that he was going to kill him and slammed the person’s head against the lifeguard stand, the witness said.
The witness then jumped off the tower and headed for the boardwalk. The kid came back again, he said, saying he thought he had killed someone and was going to jail. Palm Beach police arrived then, the witness said.
They found the victim covered in blood.
The teen’s father says he is appalled by what happened and can’t believe that the state has not filed charges against the 39-year-old for sex with a minor. Florida law makes it a second-degree felony for a person 24 or older to engage in any sexual activity with a 16- or 17-year-old.
”I want to know how a 39-year-old man, disguised as a woman, was able to pick up a 17-year-old,” the father said.
But the transsexual, now 40, gives a different version of events.
HAD BEEN DRINKING
She said in her deposition that she had several drinks over the course of the evening and agreed to go to a party with the two young men because she needed to sober up before driving home. She figured they were in their early 20s.
The teen came onto her aggressively, kissing her, touching her breasts and putting her face in his lap. She said she told him that she was a transsexual and denies that there was any sexual activity.
The only witness to what happened before the beating, the 17-year-old’s friend, was in his own juvenile trouble and violated a court order by going out that night, Brewer said.
The friend has his own lawyer, Brewer said, and isn’t talking.
Florida law says that a crime is ”aggravated by prejudice” when a perpetrator intentionally selects a victim because of a characteristic like race, religion or ethnicity.
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