Content Notice: This article contains photos of bruising and physical injury. Reader discretion is appreciated.
A trans activist has been given an astoundingly light sentence after brutally assaulting a woman over an apparent “misgendering” incident.
In a February exclusive, Reduxx reported that a woman had been left with life-changing injuries after being attacked by a trans activist during a night out with her partner. Ruby, whose name was anonymized for her protection, provided Reduxx with police reports and hospital records demonstrating that she had been the victim of a brutal assault.
The incident took place on September 24, 2022, while Ruby and her partner were attending the Punks Pub Crawl in Melbourne, a longstanding barhopping tradition for those in the punk rock scene. Ruby, a bass guitarist in a local band, had been attending the crawl since she was a teenager.
“I had only just arrived with my partner sometime around 3 p.m. There were about 70 people or so attending the crawl. The whole group of us stopped at Carlton Gardens for a group photo,” Ruby recounted, explaining that immediately after the photo was taken she would have an incident that has since left her with a debilitating injury.
“I was walking away, talking to a friend when I noticed one male walking beside the group but in the opposite direction to the rest of us,” Ruby said. “As he passed me he shoulder-barged me hard, and I stopped to address him.”
At the time, Ruby described her attacker as “male, but not obviously ‘trans.’” As she was with a group of individuals belonging to the punk rock community, she didn’t immediately believe he was attempting to present as the opposite sex, and simply thought he was donning classic punk attire.
Startled by the body check, Ruby confronted the man.
“I said something very close to, ‘Is there a problem here? Do you and I need to have a conversation?’ He started denying and gaslighting. He claimed it was an accident and one of his friends backed him up. It was clearly no accident so I replied, ‘No, he just shoulder-barged me as hard as he could.’”
Ruby described that the onlookers immediately seemed to take issue with the pronoun she had used for the man.
“I heard a few murmurs of ‘He?’ Like people were offended at my choice of pronoun,” she said. “I stood facing him for another [few seconds] waiting to see if he was going to kick off, but he seemed to have nothing to say so I turned and walked away.”
But just as she did, Ruby explained that she was suddenly attacked from behind, with the man pushing her onto the concrete with tremendous force.
“I was wearing a heavy studded leather jacket so I went down hard and fast. I put my left arm out to break the fall with anything other than my head and the impact reverberated all up my arm, shattering my shoulder and breaking my arm at the joint.”
Ruby was ultimately treated at Austin Health hospital, where she was sent for a CAT scan and X-ray and diagnosed with a fractured shoulder.
While in hospital, Ruby had managed to track down the individual who had assaulted her through a band contact. She recognized her assailant had been friends with an individual who her band had performed with in the past, and skimmed his socials to find more information. She managed to identify the attacker, and, armed with the information, went to Melbourne Police and filed a report after being discharged from hospital.
In February, Ruby supplied Reduxx with the police statement she signed and witnessed with a Constable about her ordeal. In the statement, she named Sarah Cadzow, a male who identifies as a “woman,” as her assailant.
She also speculated that their mutual band contact had alerted Cadzow to her views on gender ideology at the Punks Pub Crawl, and that he had body-checked her in retaliation.
Despite having provided Melbourne Police with two witness statements as well as the identity of her attacker, it took them 4 months to lay charges against Cadzow. The attack occurred in September of 2022, and Cadzow was finally charged in January of 2023.
On the delay in laying charges, Ruby told Reduxx that she observed a definite “tone shift” when police learned her assailant was transgender.
While Cadzow’s initial hearing was scheduled for April 14, he was finally sentenced on July 5. But the consequences handed down by the court have left Ruby feeling as though Cadzow effectively “got away with it.”
Cadzow was sentenced to a 5-month good behavior bond and was ordered to pay $750 AUD (approx. $500 USD) to an Aboriginal family violence charity. In Australia, a good behavior bond refers to a non-custodial sentence primarily requiring the offender stay in “good behavior” during the time specified.
Ruby provided a statement to Reduxx on the sentence, expressing upset at the outcome and revealing that Cadzow’s defense had painted him to be the victim during the hearings.
“His lawyer made up facts in court, moving the location and alleging that my assailant had been ‘viciously misgendered’ and ‘taunted till (he) couldn’t take it anymore,” Ruby explains. “Cadzow wrote a bullshit ‘apology’ that I never saw, and complained of having suffered terribly because the truth about his male violence was told on social media.”
Ruby revealed that during proceedings, Cadzow’s defense had interrogated the February Reduxx article, as well as Twitter comments from our readers on the piece, to craft a narrative that Cadzow had been subject to unacceptable online abuse as a result of our reporting.
Disturbingly, the defense also rejected the reality of the extent of Ruby’s injuries.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Ruby revealed that the injury had resulted in long-term disability in the arm where her shoulder had been shattered. She explained that a doctor had told her “your ability to lift that arm above your head ended when you hit the ground.”
Speaking to Reduxx in February, Ruby stated: “I will never swim again, [or] shoot hoops with my son, get things from high shelves, or hang washing.”
But in court, the defense appeared to accuse Ruby of lying about the extent of her injuries.
“The prosecution didn’t bother following up on medical records so [Cadzow’s] lawyer just stood there and said it’s not true that I’ll never raise my left arm again. I just gave it another go but reality seems to be interfering,” she says.
Cadzow was found to have “recklessly caused injury” to Ruby but was handed the sentence without conviction, meaning he will not have a criminal record associated with the assault.
Despite the fact that Cadzow was seemingly allowed to “walk away” from the incident, Australia has recently gained a reputation for cracking down on women who oppose gender ideology.
In May, Reduxx learned that two women who criticized a transgender male who had induced lactation to breastfeed a baby had been told by Twitter that they had broken Australian law.
Breastfeeding counselor Jasmine Sussex and Leah Whiston of Standing For Women Queensland (SFWQ) were both contacted by Twitter on May 16 and informed that content posted to their accounts would be censored to Australian users in order to comply with Australian law. Both had tweeted their concerns about a trans-identified male who had been breastfeeding a child.
In 2020, Canberra radio newsreader Beth Rep was ordered to pay a trans-identified male $10,000 AUD (approx. $6,600 USD) in compensation after “liking” Facebook posts he considered offensive.
Reduxx is your source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% independent! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.
