The father of an Oklahoma teen whose suicide made national headlines has been exposed as a registered sex offender who now identifies as transgender. In 2019, James Everette Hughes was convicted of raping his daughter, Dagny “Nex” Benedict, when she was nine years old, and sentenced to five years in prison. Hughes is now listed as “female” on the sex offender registry, and has changed his legal name to Chloe Elizabeth.
High school student Benedict was 16 years old when she took her own life last year. According to a coroner report, autopsy results determined her death was caused by an overdose of Prozac and Benadryl. The incident received national media attention as Benedict identified as non-binary, and had complained of ongoing bullying by her peers at Owasso High School.
On February 7, 2024, Benedict was involved in an altercation in the girls’ restroom with three students who had been mocking her. While in the restroom, Benedict overheard the students mocking her friend, and in response, poured water on them. Benedict said the trio then assaulted her until she lost consciousness.
“They came at me. They grabbed on my hair. I grabbed onto them,” Benedict would later tell a police officer. “I threw one of them into a paper towel dispenser and then they got my legs out from under me and got me on the ground.”
Owasso High School administrators contacted the girl’s grandmother and adoptive mother, Sue Benedict. She arrived to find Benedict with several bruises and scratches on her face and head. School officials informed Sue that her granddaughter would be suspended for two weeks, and she then took the teen to be examined at a hospital.
The following day, February 8, Benedict collapsed in the living room at her home. Sue called emergency services and informed operators that the girl’s eyes had rolled back into her head, and that she was struggling to breathe. By the time medical personnel arrived at their home, she had stopped breathing, and she was pronounced dead by the evening.
Benedict’s suicide was quickly framed by major mainstream outlets, including The Washington Post, as a cautionary tale about “transphobia,” with some coverage suggesting her death was linked to an Oklahoma executive order defining a person’s sex as their biological sex at birth. Since then, numerous transgender advocacy groups have cited her death as evidence of the “consequences” of “anti-LGBTQ hate.”
Politicians across the United States expressed similar sentiments, with some even portraying the death as being a direct result of the fight that had occurred in the school washroom the day before Benedict’s overdose.
Nex Benedict’s death from a brutal assault in their high school bathroom is outrageous and heartbreaking.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) February 21, 2024
The anti-trans fervor fueled by extreme Republicans across the country is having deadly consequences for our children.
We must stand up against anti-trans hate. https://t.co/zSMxEa5FFj
However, most of these accounts did not acknowledge that Benedict’s history of childhood sexual abuse may also have played a role in her long-standing mental health struggles.
But an article by The Distance Magazine‘s Matt Osborne has shed disturbing new light on the tragic story.
While it had been previously understood that Benedict was a victim of incestuous sexual abuse, Osborne has revealed that Benedict’s father now identifies as transgender himself.
Hughes was convicted in 2019 of repeatedly raping Benedict. For the horrific crime, he received a five-year prison sentence with a ten year suspended sentence, as well as lifetime sex offender registration. According to Osborne, Hughes was arrested in January 2024 for failing to comply with his registration requirements. Benedict took her life thirteen days later.
Osborne notes that upon his arrest, Hughes was already showing some signs that indicated he may have been transitioning. Compared to a booking photo from his first time in prison, Hughes had already begun to grow his hair out and had softened facial features which could have been the result of hormone replacement therapy.
An updated inmate photo taken at the Sebastian County Jail in May of 2025 shows Hughes, using the name “James Tsang,” with a freshly-shaved face, shoulder-length hair, and what appears to be some light makeup.
Hughes is currently listed as “Chloe Elizabeth Hughes” on the National Sex Offender Public Website and has been classified as a “female” sex offender by the state of California, where he currently resides in Los Angeles.
While Hughes is not currently in custody, any future offenses he may commit would likely result in him being sent to a women’s prison due to California’s lenient gender identity laws.
SB-132, or the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, went into effect in January of 2021, and allowed male inmates to seek transfer to women’s prisons on the basis of self-declared gender identity. Male inmates do not have to be on hormones, have surgery, be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or even have legal documents supporting their transgender status in order to gain transfer.
According to Keep Prisons Single Sex USA, 33.8% of all male inmates seeking transfer to women’s prisons are sex offenders, and the Bureau of Prisons has affirmed that sex offenders are responsible for up to 50% of rapes which occur within federal prisons.
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