A California judge has ordered everyone in a prison rape case — prosecution, defense, and witnesses — to refer to the male defendant in the case with female pronouns because he identifies as a woman.
The Madera County judge stipulated last week that Tremaine Carroll, a 52-year-old inmate, must be referred to as she or her because he — or, in the judge’s mind, she — “deserves dignity.”
His alleged victims? Not so much.
“It’s just absolutely insane that a victim would have to get on the stand and police their pronoun usage when trying to recite one of the scariest times of their lives,” Supervising Deputy District Attorney Eric Dutemple told KFSN.
It also makes things difficult for everyone else.
“This is a particular issue in this case because it’s confusing to the jury,” said District Attorney Sally Moreno. “In California, rape is a crime that has to be accomplished by a man.”
Carroll, a career criminal since age 15, is currently serving a 25-years-to-life sentence in an all-male facility. He was, however, previously held in the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the location of his alleged rapes.
Said to Moreno:
After his first cellmate became pregnant and was moved to Los Angeles, two other cellmates of his had complained that he had raped them, so we have filed rape charges against this inmate.
Prison Transfer
How did Carroll end up in a women’s prison, when, as Moreno observed, “this is a person who is not a woman in any sense of the word”?
Quite simply, California lawmakers — from the Democrat-controlled Legislature to Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom — passed a law in 2021 that gave inmates the option of being housed in the prison corresponding to their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
Under the law, known as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, explained Moreno:
There’s no psychological evaluation that needs to be done. This person does not need to be on cross-gender hormones, they don’t need to be signed up for transgender surgery, they don’t need to [have] a psychological evaluation regarding gender confusion, the mere statement is enough.
Within three months of the law’s passage, Carroll, who had never before shown signs of being anything other than male, declared himself female. And with that, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) transferred him to the women’s prison. There he became a celebrity among transgender activists.
The New American reported last May:
The following March, he claimed he was a “trans woman” in an article for a black newspaper. In that masterpiece of jailhouse journalism, he complained about “systemic discrimination by the criminal justice system,” Reduxx reported. “He also claimed he was in prison for ‘non-violent’ offenses, in contradiction of his criminal history.”
The story gets even better — or worse for the woman he is suspected of raping — from there:
The next year, Carroll was profiled by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, who featured him as being “an incarcerated transgender woman instrumental in several prison lawsuits.”
Discordant Instrument
According to Fox News, Carroll has, in fact, been instrumental in countless prison lawsuits:
In prison, Carroll committed various serious rule violations between 2001 and 2015. His offenses included fighting with other inmates, refusing to obey orders, drug possession, filing a false report against a peace officer and “behavior that could lead to violence,” according to court records. He also filed various complaints alleging racial discrimination and sexual misconduct by CDCR employees.
“Tremaine has a long history of filing lawsuits against the department, tons of lawsuits. He is constantly writing inmate complaints about everyone and anyone he can have a negative impact on,” said [Amie] Ichikawa [founder and executive director of Women II Women and a former inmate].
Curiously, Carroll referred to himself with the pronouns he and him in all his pre-2021 complaints. Now, though, he expects to be treated as a woman simply by virtue of declaring himself one.
In a 2023 interview with MindSiteNews, Fox News wrote,
Carroll told the interviewer he “never felt the need” to outwardly identify as anything or “wear lipstick or wear tight clothing or try to change my voice” because doing so would “put me in a box.”
Of course, Carroll isn’t alone among male prisoners seeking easier access to potential victims. CDCR’s own statistics show that a third of allegedly transgender male inmates seeking to transfer to women’s facilities are registered sex offenders. “In federal prisons,” noted The New American, “48 percent of trans women are sex offenders.”
Carroll’s Wonderland
Democrats are devoted to the trans cult at the expense of common sense (not to mention contributions and votes). Remarked Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey:
Now we have women who face a justice system that rejects the very basis of their complaint. We have prosecutors who have to overcome arbitrary language barriers to argue what takes place in rape. Prisons now lock [up] violent men with women on the basis of the man’s feelings without any regard to the obvious risks and dignity of the women in their custody. We have a judge more interested in dignity than in truth, in large part constrained and somewhat motivated by a state legislature more interested in [virtue] signaling than reality. [Emphasis in original.]
Carroll deserves a fair trial. But with the legal system so plainly biased in his favor, how can anyone have confidence in the trial’s outcome?
