CONTENT NOTICE: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault committed against both adult and child victims. Reader discretion is appreciated.
A violent transgender sex offender has launched multiple lawsuits against over 20 members of staff at the St. Francois County Jail and South Missouri Mental Health Center after reportedly being denied female undergarments. Kelly McSean, a violent rapist and pedophile, is awaiting trial after escaping jail while in custody for attacking sex offender treatment program staff.
As previously reported by Reduxx, McSean, born Larry Bemboom, has an extremely long and depraved criminal history.
In 2003, while still living under his birth name, he pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a 39-year-old African American woman. McSean had offered the woman a ride home, but instead took her to his residence where he both orally and vaginally raped her.
During the assault, McSean made racially degrading remarks to the victim, telling her that his ancestors owned slaves and ordering her call to him “master.” The woman managed to escape and fled nude from his residence. For the brutal attack, he was sentenced to just five years in prison.
Before his scheduled 2008 release, a prison psychiatrist reported that McSean met the statutory definition of a sexually violent predator and, after a second evaluating psychiatrist concurred, the state of Missouri filed a petition to involuntarily commit him to its Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Service program. A jury trial subsequently found that he met the legal requirements for civil commitment, and he was sent to reside at Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Program (SORTS) in Farmington.
McSean appealed the decision, but evidence presented by the evaluating psychiatrist provided insight into the predator’s extensive history of sexual violence dating back to when he was just a minor.
According to the evaluation — at 13 years of age, McSean molested an eight-year-old girl and forced her to perform oral sex on him. He also fondled and orally copulated a 12-year-old boy. The following year, he was sent to counseling after he was found soliciting other boys to perform oral sex on him in his school bathroom.
McSean was placed in sex offender treatment when he was just 15 years old after exposing himself to a younger relative, but while in treatment he molested another underage girl in his proximity.
Between the ages of 19 and 30, McSean would commit several more sex offenses, primarily against minors. He told the evaluating psychiatrist that he repeatedly raped a 16-year-old girl in 1995, as well as engaged in oral sex with her 11-year-old brother. He also stated that he moved in with two girls aged 14 and 16 in 1998, raped a 15-year-old girl, and molested a 14-year-old.
At age 30, he was arrested for sodomizing a 12-year-old girl after giving her marijuana. He received a suspended five-year sentence and three years probation. McSean said that while in the community, he committed a number of sexual assaults for which he was never charged, including molesting children as young as 8 at the Salvation Army, and raping unidentified male and female children.
In 2003, prior to being charged for the rape of the 39-year-old woman, McSean admitted to having kidnapped two teens and holding them captive at his residence where he forced them to perform oral sex on him.
McSean also said that around the same time, he was molesting a younger female relative and threatening to kill her if she told on him. He would sneak into her room at night, cover her mouth and rape her, as well as penetrating her with foreign objects.
While McSean attempted to appeal his sexually violent offender designation, the appeal was denied in 2010 and he has remained in civil commitment since. Sometime between 2010 and 2023, he began identifying as a “transgender female woman.”
While at SORTS, McSean violently attacked a treatment worker, leading to his transfer to the St. Francois County Jail to await trial on the charges.
On January 17, McSean, along with 4 other inmates, escaped the prison via a plumbing-access hole. Cameras that would ordinarily have tracked their escape were not functioning due to construction being done on the building. The prisoners weren’t discovered missing until a routine inmate count. A wild police chase ensued, with McSean and the others being caught on street surveillance camera footage stealing a car in a nearby parking lot.
McSean was apprehended three days after the escape, and has been at the St. Francois County Jail ever since. But Reduxx has now learned that over the course of the past 5 months, McSean has filed a number of lawsuits alleging mistreatment at the hands of staff both at the jail and at the South Missouri Mental Health Center.
Though McSean is alleging various forms of mistreatment, the majority of his complaints appear to stem from his inability to access “gender affirming” items and treatments, most notably women’s undergarments. He also takes issue with being “misgendered” and “demeaned” while in custody, and having been treated as a male despite his state and prison documentation listing him as a “female.”
McSean has similarly alleged sexual harassment, with these claims stemming from “misgendering” incidents, “discrimination on the basis of sex,” and routine searches not being conducted in the fashion he demands. He has also claimed he was “sexually assaulted” during a strip-search, emphasizing that his penis and “breasts” had been exposed to male officers.
McSean has alleged the various “mistreatments” have caused him anxiety, sleep issues, nightmares, high blood pressure, a los of appetite, migraines, crying spells, and more physical and psychological issues. He has requested damages ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 per defendant and per concern. In one of the filed complaints alone, the total requested damages exceed $14,900,000.
One of McSean’s lawsuits was filed with two other inmates as co-Plaintiffs, both of whom were involved in McSean’s escape from the jail in January – Aaron Sebastian, a sexually violent predator who sodomized a young girl, and Dakota Pace. McSean identifies both of the men as “friends” of his. In their lawsuit, the three criminals allege mistreatment at the hands of St. Francois County Jail staff.
Disturbingly, one of the multiple complaints filed by McSean suggests that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has intervened on his behalf at least once. In a hand-written complaint submitted in August, McSean wrote:
“After being informed that the ACLU and an attorney has contacted the St. Francois county detention center of [sic] the constitutional rights of transgender persons, I submitted an inmate request form as to the status of ability to purchase and have female undergarments.”
While the ACLU has not commented publicly on McSean’s case, the organization has been known to be a strong advocate of transgender inmates, even those who have committed the most heinous crimes.
In Indiana, the ACLU recently filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Corrections after a trans-identified male inmate convicted of murdering his infant stepdaughter was denied “gender affirming” surgeries. The suit, which was filed on August 28 of 2023, challenges a recently-adopted policy stipulating that the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) cannot provide transgender surgeries to inmates.
The ACLU has also lamented the criminal penalties of transgender inmates, including the Florida execution of rapist and murderer Duane Owen.
On June 16 of 2023, the ACLU, through their official Twitter account, lambasted the state of Florida for refusing to provide “medically necessary gender-affirming care” to Duane Owen. Using feminine pronouns to refer to Owen, the ACLU claimed the state had caused Owen “enormous suffering” and had violated “her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment for the more than 30 years she was in state custody.”
They further stated that Owen, who had raped and murdered two women in an effort to “harvest their hormones,” had argued in legal documents that he “should be afforded the essence of human dignity.”