A transgender woman has been ruled unfit to plead to the alleged murder of her husband in Brighton last year, a court was told this morning (Monday 14 July).
Judge Christine Laing, the honorary recorder of Brighton and Hove, heard evidence at Lewes Crown Court from medical experts on the health conditions of Joanna Rowland-Stuart, 71.
She is charged with murder of Andrew Rowland-Stuart, 70, in their flat in Lavender Street, in Brighton, on 27 May 2024.
Judge Laing ruled: “She would be an unreliable witness in her own defence and would not be fit to be cross-examined and for those reasons alone I find her unfit to plead.”
A trial of the act – which decides if someone physically committed a crime rather than their intent – is due to take place, without Rowland-Stuart’s participation.
This is a man. These are violent men’s crimes and nothing to do with women
Incorrect. This is a transgender woman. Crime stats will record it as such.
Crime stats can say what they want but this is a biological man. I respect his right to dress and live however he wants but I will not demean real women by calling him one. It’s a dude.
The crime data should be recorded according to the sex of those involved not their perceived gender. Their sex is immutable — as it is with all mammals. And given that gender can seemlingly vary day to day, hour to hour, its utility for statistical reference is limited.
A further refinement would be correct use of sex based terms. A women is an adult human female and any other use would amount to cultural approrpriation.
What are the ‘transgender’ statistics you persist in insisting exist? Sex and gender data is conflated as highlighted by the O’Sullivan review, the brighton and hove health survey etc. Trans ‘women’ who have been convicted of rape (ie convicted of penetration by their penis) have been logged as the sex/gender they identify with I.e. a woman. The crime committed here was a violent man’s type crime, not a woman’s type crime, yet this person is being referred to as a woman. At least BHN had made it clear this is a trans woman. Women’s health, safety, criminal justice, employment, sports, equity etc. data has been absolutely compromised as a result of conflating sex and gender.
“man’s type crime, not a woman’s type crime”
Are you honestly saying it’s impossible for a woman to commit a violent crime , in your worldview, and therefore this is proof of your worldview?
Circular and disgusting logic.
The Supreme Court made it very clear that a woman is an adult human female. It’s very misleading to report the crimes of violent men as if they had been committed by a woman.
Susan, the Supreme Court ruling only applies to the Equality Act’s use of ‘woman’ in discrimination law. It doesn’t affect criminal law or media reporting. In this case, the defendant is a transgender woman and is being referred to as such in line with court reporting standards. Whether or not she has a Gender Recognition Certificate, most criminal proceedings and media outlets respect the individual’s lived gender unless legally compelled otherwise.
What ‘court reporting standards’ are you referring to in relation to sex and gender? The tide is just starting to turn on the need for accurate sex based data, but trans rights have systematically bulldozed women’s rights, data, safety etc. for years now, and no amount of claims ‘the reporting and data is accurate’ will undo the damage done or rebuild trust. Beyond time this is collected and reported accurately.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-data-statistics-and-research-on-sex-and-gender/review-of-data-statistics-and-research-on-sex-and-gender-executive-summary
This is a man. Why do you insist on insulting 51% of the population by attributing a man’s violent crime to a woman? Disgusting.
Because she is actually a transgender woman, and would be attributed to transgender statistics.
Why do you seem to interpret the existence of a transwoman, or the alleged crime of a transwoman, as an insult to all women? This seems bizarre to me. A person is generally responsible for their own actions, not the actions of a whole population of people who share characteristics with them. Attributing a crime to a (single) transwoman in no way reflects on the population or all women, or all trans women. You need not take offence at this ‘ghost’ bigotry (that no-one here seems to have expressed).
Obviously, something tragic has happened, and Ms Rowland-Stuart has been found to be legally incompetent on some medical grounds. We know very little of this case from the article, and I tend to assume the judge in this case is far more informed and skilled at making such determinations than any of us keyboard commentators.
Try being a little slower to judge, slower to take offence, in the absence of better information.
A murder recorded as being committed by a woman. How can crime statistics be relied on?
By understanding how data is collected, for a start, Mike.
Police and national crime statistics don’t just take gender at face value. Where someone is known to be transgender, that’s recorded separately in custody and sentencing data.
Reporting someone as a woman in an article doesn’t mean the homicide will be counted blindly as ‘female suspect’ in crime stats. Agencies like the ONS and MoJ already track this with more nuance.
These statistics can’t be relied on because in the haste to be “kind’ and not offend men who want to identify as women, as a system we have systematically corrupted our data (along with women’s rights etc.). Hence the police (along with other institutions) having to backtrack on how they collect sex and gender data. Even the ONS screwed up on this matter. So even more important it is now reported accurately to get us back to reliable meaningful data that everyone can rely on and trust.
Welcome to the world of fraggles.
I object to this headline. Haven’t we learnt anything from the Supreme Court ruling? Please clean up your act, women have had enough of this insidious ideology. Violent men committing violent crimes need reporting accurately.
Nothing wrong with the headline, if it mattered, the addition of the word transgender makes little difference, since it’s literally the second word in the actual article.
The SC clarification does not apply to journalism or criminal cases. Ironically, that’s the most inaccurate thing here.
Conflating identify and sex including when reporting violent crimes does matter. Perhaps less so if you are male, but it really does matter to women because it’s about their stats, their rights, health, safety. Whether you agree with women speaking up or not, that’s got to be pretty obvious.
“A trial of the act – which decides if someone physically committed a crime rather than their intent – is due to take place…”
Do you mean a trial of the facts?
It is irresponsible in the extreme to carry a headline such as this when the perpetrator is a man. Patterns of criminality do not change when men “transition”; the pattern of criminality is the same amongst men and amongst men who have so-called transitioned. Headlines such as this give a very misleading impression, that women are suddenly committing more violent crimes, especially as a vast number of people never read beyond the headlines. Shame on you.
Transgender crime statistics, in both being perpetrator and victims, change very significantly, which are why they are recorded separately.
Benjamin’s been triggered
Not a fan of uninformed bigotry, Al.
“women are suddenly committing more violent crimes,”
Are you under the impression there are now masses of criminal trans women or something?
Its a fact 70% of trans identified men are in prison for sexual crimes
Which was about 60-70 people. And for the same period, twice as many female prisoners for the same crime, then men at about 17,000.
Problem with percentage stats with transgender is that it’s a very small sample size.
Flossing over what that actually means Benjamin: in 2020 58.9% of trans (mtf) offenders were convicted of a sex offence, compared to 3.3% of female offenders. That’s a significant difference. It’s also a significant difference from the percentage of men (non trans) in prison for sexual offences at 16.8%. No amount of misleading stats or virtue signalling changes that fact.
Ironically, like I said, that’s the trouble with percentages and large differences in sample sizes, KL. It makes for a poor comparison and misleads the conversation. Transgender individuals are also five times more likely to be subjected to sexual crime themselves.
Shame I didn’t the people who take headlines at face value and can’t be bothered to actually read the article but the other offer an opinion.
Journalism should have a focus on accuracy. This is not a woman’s crime – the headline is incorrect. This was a crime committed by a Transwoman – i.e. a biological male. This is very poor quality writing.
Journalism typically respects lived gender. The headline is correct. It could be more correct by including the word transgender, but it is clarified by the SECOND word in the article.
What is lived gender? What clothes and makeup you wear? Its all made up.
Lived gender is the gender one typically represents themselves as outwardly in social spaces. It can be transgenderism or transvestism.
Obviously, one must reserve judgement until the court has delivered its verdict. That said, the information forthcoming about this incident so far would suggest this is one very sick individual.
This is a man. But his crime will end up being recorded as one committed by a woman – this skews important data about criminal offenses.
Journalism means very little if a journalist cannot even accurately record the sex of someone accused of such a heinous crime.
This is a transgender woman. This crime will end up being recorded as one by a transgender woman. This ensures accurate important data about criminal offences. Journalism is perfectly entitled to call a transgender woman a woman and is accurate to say this when accused of such a heinous crime.
The perpetrator is not a woman – the headline is inaccurate.
Violence by women (as opposed to against women) is very low compared with male violence.
Brighton and Hove News should consider reporting crime accurately.
The perp is a transgender woman, Beattie.
Thats a bloke in a dress, AKA a male, AKA a man – not a woman, not feminine, not female. A man.
None of you care that a person died, or that their partner was sufficiently mentally unwell to kill them – you only care about how their gender is reported. Shame on all of you.
Reflects poorly on all of us, doesn’t it?
Reflects more poorly on the mental health state of transgender people to be honest. They do seem to be very unhappy people going by Reddit.
It’s a good point, there is a larger portion of mental health within the transgender demographic. Certainly lends itself to the argument that there is more to it than simple body dysmorphia, and why people are right when they say we should be reluctant to turn to the knife before exploring everything else first.
Reddit though…is generally an unhappy place!
Thats a man.
Transgender woman.
AKA – Man.
Nope, come on, you’re better than that.
It’s a bloke , when arrested he didn’t have his wig on , definitely a bloke , and his other half used to be tranny , and they both said they lesbians back then
Mental health through and through ,
Nice to see transphobes caring more about gender than, I don’t know, murder.
I stopped commenting on here sometime ago. Because certain keyboard warriors monopolise the comments section.
Surely the story here is that two 70 year olds were in a long term relationship, and then one killed the other in extraordinary circumstances.
The details of what happened, and why, have yet to be revealed.
In the short term, let’s pay our respects to the man who died, and send condolences to friends and family left behind.
It’s a man
It’s a man. Please report the truth. Readers aren’t fools
The left want all this “we can identity as what we want bullcrap”. A person as been killed, by a person who identified as a woman.
Yes identified as woman.
How this is reported and this person is described is really important. MtF transgender have the same criminal profile as men: in 2020 they were 6X more likely than women to be convicted of an offence in the first place and 18x more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. There is also a disproportionate number of trans mtf in prison for sex based crimes compared to BOTH the male and female (non trans) population. If trans women are misrepresented as women either in the news or in data this skews women’s sex and violent crime offence reporting and data significantly. This will also be picked up by AI and further misrepresented. Maybe small numbers but no amount of calling people (ie women) bigots for exposing this changes the fact trans gender crimes skew women’s data.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/