A trans-identified male in Germany has been sentenced to an indefinite stay at a psychiatric ward as part of his sentence for exhibitionism and violent assaults on women. Due to strict privacy laws in Germany, the man’s identity has not been released, and he will be referred to as “Klaus” for the purposes of this article.
As previously reported by Reduxx, the 56-year-old man from Troisdorf had to stand trial at the regional court in Bonn for threats, grievous bodily harm and exposing his penis to women on a train. But during the trial, the court had to weigh whether or not to pursue the charges against Klaus for exhibitionism due to his gender identity. In Germany, only males can be charged with exhibitionism of the penis, and because Klaus identified as “female,” it was initially unclear whether the charge could apply to him.
However, as General-Anzeiger has now revealed, the court determined that because Klaus had not yet changed his legal sex marker, the charges for exhibitionism were still applicable.
Klaus was sentenced to one year and ten months in prison for grievous bodily harm, threats and exhibitionism, but is unlikely to ever see the inside of a jail cell. Immediately after the verdict was announced, he was transported to a closed psychiatric hospital for an indefinite period of time due to his sadistic violent fantasies that the court argued made him a danger to the general public.
Klaus has a lengthy criminal record, and, during the trial, a review of his past violent history is said to have taken over an hour to read out.
In October of 2008, Klaus attacked a 52-year-old woman, violently pulling her to the ground and sitting on her in an attempt to try and pull her boots off her legs. According to a General Anzeiger report from the time, Klaus fled to the forest to try the boots on, at which point he got “real excitement.” After being tracked down by police, investigators found a whole collection of women’s boots at his home.
The next year, Klaus was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after being convicted of aggravated extortion and grievous bodily harm, and the court ordered permanent placement in a psychiatric institution because he was found to have attacked a total of two women in order to violently rip their boots off their feet. His second attack was only possible because he had not been detained after his first was reported.
During that trial, a psychiatric expert stated that it was clear that Klaus was a dangerous man and “what drives him goes far beyond fetishism.” The expert testified that Klaus was at risk for escalating his behavior in order to get a “stronger kick” out of his actions.
But his stay in the psychiatric clinic only lasted around 7 years and, while confined to the facility for his criminal convictions, Klaus began identifying as a woman and received both hormone replacement therapy and breast implants. Klaus has already reportedly stated that he has no desire to have a vaginoplasty.
Klaus was handed his sentence just one day before Germany’s new self-identification law came into force. He is now entitled to change his legal sex and be placed on a women’s ward at the psychiatric hospital he will be housed at.
On November 1, 2024, the Self-Determination Act came into force in Germany. The law is widely considered to be one of the most relaxed gender identity laws in the world, and greatly simplifies the process for changing the sex marker and names on legal documents. The law has almost no restrictions, and even convicted sex offenders can be fast-tracked for identity changes.
The law has also strengthened “protections” for trans-identified individuals. Those accused of revealing the birth sex or name of a transgender person risk fines of €10,000 (approx. $11,000 USD).