A popular transgender TikToker in Australia is facing multiple charges related to the repeated sexual abuse of a child.
Rachel Queen Burton, 44, has been accused of crimes including the production of child exploitation material and gross indecency. In total, Burton is facing 8 charges, all of which appear to stem from a child victim who was repeatedly abused throughout 2019. While Burton is from Australia’s Northern Territory, the crimes were committed in the Southern state.
Burton’s case was first reported by The Advertiser, which referred to Burton as a “woman” and utilized feminine pronouns for him.
Burton was best known for his popular TikTok account, which had over 36,000 followers and boasted 418,000 ‘likes.’ On his profile, he describes himself as a “proud trans woman” who is “living my best life with no regrets.”
His birth name has not yet been verified, but it is known that Burton is the father of four children, all of whom seem to be tattooed on his chest. He does not appear to have lived with the children at any point in the last year, which is when his TikTok account was launched.
In January, Burton posted a video announcing he had been on hormone replacement therapy for 1 month and providing his viewers an update on his physical health.
“I [thought] I was supposed to get moody. But I haven’t been moody since starting the testosterone blockers … I got a little bitchy — just a little bitchy, that was when I was straight on the estrogen,” Burton explains, “I still cry. I still cry heaps. I’m still an emotional wreck. But it’s a nice emotion.”
Burton’s arrest is reflected in his account’s history, as he abruptly stopped posting regular content in June, apparently after being taken into police custody.
Comments on all of Burton’s TikTok videos have been disabled. But in an update video posted by user mairbear_67, commenters can be seen expressing their suspicions that something had not been quite right with Burton.
“That’s why [he] never spoke of [his] kids!” One viewer replied, with another writing: “Always had an off vibe about [him].”
While prosecutors moved to postpone Burton’s case by 10 weeks in order to conduct an electronic analysis of his laptop, his defense lawyers objected, complaining that Burton had already been detained for four months pending trial. Burton has not entered a plea on any of the charges.
Magistrate Simon Smart opted to remand Burton to custody. A hearing on the charges is expected in December. It is currently unknown if he is being housed in the male or female estate, but Australian law is notoriously lax on gender self-identification.
According to Women’s Forum Australia, the state of South Australia, where Burton is being tried, has no straightforward policies on where to place transgender inmates, but individuals are usually accommodated on a case-by-case basis.
Prison gender self-identification laws have become a significant discussion in Australia following a recent protest by female inmates against a trans-identified male they were being incarcerated with.
In August, female inmates at Australia’s largest women’s correctional facility in Victoria launched a petition to have a trans-identified male sex offender removed out of fears for their own safety.
The women advised media that they had no prejudices against transgender individuals, but were concerned for their safety as the transfer had a “working” penis and a history of violent sexual assault. According to the petition — after learning of the convict’s transfer, “the mental well-being of many of the women was severely compromised. They became visibly upset as they were triggered and traumatized.”
While the name of the transferred inmate was not released to the public, Reduxx determined that the details from the criminal’s background mirror that of Lisa Jones, a trans-identified male who had been sentenced to 3 years and 3 months in prison for sexually assaulting a woman last year. During his trial, it was revealed that Jones also had a prior record for sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl in Germany.
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