Content Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse. Reader discretion is appreciated.
A trans-identified male who used his own young daughter to create sadistic child sexual exploitation material has now been classified as a “female” by the New Jersey Department of Corrections.
In May of 2022, Matthew “Marina” Volz was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the horrific sexual torture of his 7-year-old daughter. Volz, along with three other individuals, ran a home-made “transgender pornography” production business specializing in BDSM, fetish, and taboo content.
Volz was separated from the child’s mother, but traveled to Oregon to take the child into his custody and transport her to New Jersey in 2018 where he began using her in child sexual exploitation videos. Volz’s horrific pornography scheme was launched just one year after he had served as the Clark College Queer Association president.
Volz was first arrested in 2019 after New Jersey Department of Child Protection became aware that he had been creating explicit content in a home where a child resided.
A search warrant was executed at the property after it was found the child had likely been exposed to sexual material, and electronic devices were subsequently seized. During forensic examination of the devices, several abusive photos and videos of the child were found.
Some of the media featured another trans-identified male, Adam “Ashley” Romero, sexually abusing the girl. Romero lived in the residence with Volz and with two other individuals, Sean Allen, who had also sexually abused the girl, and Dulcinea Gnecco, who acted as a domestic servant.
During the trial, prosecutors told the Judge the little girl had been subjected to “a vortex of darkness” after being removed from her mother’s care.
Judge Peter Tober declined to delve into the full details of the case, but noted to the court that she had been subjected to torture-like conditions, mentioning neck collars, a cage in the basement, and sex toys.
“If this was not heinous, cruel and depraved, I don’t know what is,” Judge Tober said, stating that the girl had been taken from her actual mother “solely for the sexual gratification” of others.
In media coverage of the horrific case, Volz and Romero were referred to as “women” and were addressed using “she/her” pronouns. Volz was also identified as the girl’s “mother” in the Daily Mail and My Central Jersey.
After their sentencing in May of 2022, Reduxx learned that Romero had immediately been sent to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, but that Volz had initially been placed in the South Woods State Prison for men. Just two months later, Volz was quietly transferred to Edna Mahan but was still recorded as a “male” inmate.
Reduxx has now learned that Volz’s status has been updated and he is now formally recognized as a “female” offender by the state of New Jersey.
According to a source within the prison who spoke exclusively to Reduxx, female inmates within the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women have confirmed that Volz still had his penis.
One incarcerated woman advised us that Volz and Romero had expressed an interest in getting married behind bars in an apparent effort to share a cell, and that neither had been undergoing sex offender treatment.
New Jersey’s only women’s prison is currently home to multiple violent male inmates with histories of targeting women and children. The state’s leniency in transferring the males in is likely the result of a 2021 lawsuit settlement between the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Jersey Department of Corrections which stipulated that transgender inmates must be housed on the basis of their self-declared “gender identity.”
Last year, Reduxx spoke to multiple female inmates at the facility who expressed anxiety and fear about the presence of the male inmates in their close quarters.
Miseka Diggs, an incarcerated woman at Edna Mahan, explained that the female inmates were “scared to death” of the men. Under the current policy, the men do not need to undergo any surgery, and Diggs asserts that most of the men are not on hormone replacement therapy. She stated that a majority of women incarcerated at Edna Mahan have past trauma, with many being victims of male violence, and the presence of men in the facility is causing them severe distress.
According to Diggs, women who complain of feeling unsafe are placed in protective custody.
“We can’t express our feelings in fear of being put in protective custody, [which] is like lock-up. If you use the wrong words you will be uprooted and removed from your living quarters. So many women walk around in fear,” Diggs said.
“We feel like we are part of some sick joke. This is a nightmare that we can’t wake up from,” she added. “The women here are traumatized over and over again and it seems as if no one cares about our needs. We feel like second-class citizens with no rights.”
Diggs described her anxiety at having to share a shower with one of the male transfers, whom she identified as Nikita Selket. Selket, formerly Neil LaBranche, is a 6′ 7″ man serving a thirty-year sentence for the murder of his roommate in 1995. As with Volz, the New Jersey Department of Corrections has recorded Selket as “female.”
Selket is one of 27 men who are known to have been transferred into the women’s facility in recent years.
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