A two-time murderer has had his death sentence upheld by the Supreme Court of Ohio after he attempted to appeal on the basis that his “gender dysphoria,” as well as being misgendered by the court, were mitigating factors that had not properly been taken into consideration.

Victoria Drain, previously known as Joel Drain, was sentenced to death after the 2019 murder of a fellow inmate at the Warren Correctional Institution’s psychiatric unit. Drain lured the inmate, Christopher Richardson, into his cell with the promise of sharing drugs before bludgeoning him with a fan motor.

According to court records, Drain beat Richardson with the motor until it broke before driving a pencil into his eye and using his foot to stomp it into his skull. Realizing Richardson was still alive, Drain then used the power cord of the fan motor to strangle him. Drain proceeded to stomp on Richardson’s throat multiple times.

After the crime scene was assessed, it was found that Drain had also planned to insert sharpened pencils into Richardson’s anus.

Drain admitted to the slaying, and, at the time, claimed that it had been motivated by Richardson’s refusal to participate in a separate murder plot. Drain had sought Richardson’s assistance in luring an unidentified inmate he believed was a child molester to his cell, and, when Richardson did not comply, became worried his plan would be revealed to prison authorities. Unable to murder his intended victim and concerned about repercussions, Drain targeted Richardson. Drain was sentenced to death for the slaying.

At the time of the murder, Drain was in prison for two other violent crimes.

He was serving 30-to-life for the murder of a man he beat and strangled to death, and 7 years for the non-fatal stabbing of his own father. Both crimes were committed in 2016.

In 2020, Drain submitted an appeal on his death sentence, claiming mitigating factors had not been adequately investigated or taken into consideration. Among those factors, which referenced allegations of past trauma and multiple mental illness diagnoses, were Drain’s “gender dysphoria,” and his experience having been misgendered by public defenders and the court during trial.

Drain asserted that public defenders had failed to develop “sufficient rapport” with him, and cited instances of being referred to by masculine pronouns.

“Drain contends that public defenders, although aware of Drain’s gender dysphoria, showed disrespect for her by using male pronouns and referring to her as ‘Mr. Drain,’ and failing to protest when the trial court and opposing counsel did likewise,” a Supreme Court decision document reads, using feminine pronouns to address Drain. “But Drain overlooks that … she asked Dr. O’Donnell and the defense team to use ‘masculine pronouns and naming conventions.'”

Drain was reportedly diagnosed with gender dysphoria while incarcerated, just before the 2019 murder of Richardson. Prior to his initial convictions for murder and the stabbing of his father, he did not appear to identify as a transgender “woman.”

During his death sentence appeal, Drain complained that his gender dysphoria had not been presented to the court as mitigating evidence, but Supreme Court Justice Sharon L. Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted that Drain had explicitly asked public defenders not to present such evidence on his behalf, as he had stood behind his actions.

“On the contrary, Drain made a specific point of – indeed, appears to have taken pride in – her refusal to present any ‘medical mental health excuses,'” she wrote in her decision.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in favor of upholding Drain’s execution, noting that the mitigating factors were far outweighed by the aggravating evidence.

Drain is not the first convicted criminal to use “gender dysphoria” as a defense or mitigating factor in criminal behavior.

Earlier this year, Reduxx reported that a Minnesota man who had led a far-right militia to commit a number of sexist and racist crimes had attempted to claim his actions were the result of “gender dysphoria.” Emily Claire Hari had led a militia called the White Rabbits to commit acts of domestic terror which group culminated in setting an improvised incendiary device near the Imam’s office of the Dar-al Farooq Islamic Center in Minneapolis.

During proceedings, Hari began to identify as a “woman” and asked the court to take his dysphoria into consideration. He also made a request for an amended Federal prison placement based on his identity, but appears to have been since placed in a men’s institution.

In Canada, a man who raped and assaulted multiple women is pursuing a decreased sentence on the basis of his gender identity. Jody Bourke argued that his violent past was linked to “gender dysphoria,” and is pursuing a more lenient sentence and reduction to his sex offender status.

Reduxx is a newly-launched independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% reader-funded! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.

A Norwegian programmer has revealed a conceptual design for a video game centered around slaughtering women that he refers to as “gender fascists” for being critical of gender ideology.

Sandra Moen first began posting images from his project “Terfenstein 3D” in July and has since shared over a dozen updates on Twitter, including videos of game play.

Advertising his concept on Twitter, Moen encourages players to “put blood on the walls” and refers to the enemy characters in the game as “gender fascists.” In his tweets, he incorporates hashtags such as #TERFs, #AdultHumanFemale, and #TERFIsland, which is used as a derogatory nickname for the United Kingdom, known internationally for having a strong feminist presence opposing gender identity ideology.

The game appears to be imitating the 1992 classic shooter Wolfenstein 3D, which follows a spy escaping from a prison in Nazi-controlled Germany.

Moen adopted the styling of Wolfenstein 3D, but traded out the Nazi enemies for depictions of women. In place of a swastika, the women wear arm bands that display an “XX” logo which bears a striking resemblance to the symbol used by the women’s rights organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI).

Lead representative for WDI Norway, Christina Ellingsen, told Reduxx she believed Moen was “clearly appropriating the WDI logo,” and wondered how he might choose to depict a “top-level ‘feminazi boss'” in the game.

Ellingsen is no stranger to the slandering of women who criticize gender identity beliefs as “gender fascists.” She is currently facing up to three years in prison for publicly stating that men can neither be mothers nor lesbians.

The legal complaint was brought against her by a trans rights lobby organization that has called WDI a “hate group.” The person responsible for her charges, Christine Jentoft, is a man who identifies as a lesbian woman. In June, he participated in a panel discussion about gaming with Moen.

“The representation of women’s sex-chromosomes as resembling Nazi ideology shows how far gone these men often are,” Ellingsen said. “Accusations that women who care about women’s rights are ‘feminazis’ is nothing new, though,” she added.

“Male threats of violence against women and girls in the digital sphere is obvious and ubiquitous. But to men who claim to be women, digital media is used for a kind of gamification of misogyny that is unprecedented,” Ellingsen stated.

She referenced several examples, including a browser application designed to highlight in red characters social media accounts said to belong to so-called “TERFs,” and the pornography genre known as “forced feminization.”

Moen has been vocal about his interest in pornography and BDSM practices, with a stated interest in bondage in particular. One of his previous games, Spank Fury, is described on Moen’s website: “Submissives come from left and right, and you have to spank them before they get bored.”

During a podcast interview with Trans Norge in March, Moen credited pornography with his decision to begin identifying as a woman full-time. Previously, Moen had considered himself a transvestic fetishist, sometimes also referred to as a cross-dresser.

“I began to understand that I was trans when I came across pornography featuring trans women,” Moen said. “I have never made the connection that ‘penis’ means ‘man.’ [The male porn actors] were women, but they had a penis.”

“I began to question – if they have a penis, how could other people know that they were girls when they were children? And of course, they wouldn’t know. So then I started questioning – what if I am one of these pretty ladies, in reality,” he added.

While a university student, Moen became embroiled in controversy after a woman complained about his presence in the women’s locker room. Moen, who has not had “sex-reassignment surgery,” received media attention in 2017 after it came to light that he had exposed his penis to women in the SiS Sports Center on campus.

According to court records seen by Reduxx, Moen and the woman interacted for the first time in the locker room in July 2016. The woman found Moen showering there and objected to his presence. She asked him why he was in the women’s locker room, to which he replied that he was legally a woman. Moen had changed his legal documents to state that he was female only months prior.

The woman approached Sports Center management, who informed her that no one with male genitalia would be allowed in the female locker room, regardless of legal status.

In February 2017, she confronted Moen again after finding him in the locker room again. She told Moen she did not mind if he changed there, but she “found it problematic” that he was using the showers as he had a penis he was displaying. The two became involved in a “heated conversation,” after which the woman complained to the manager of the Sports Center.

Legal records state that “[the complainant] was provoked by the fact that a person with a penis was in the women’s locker room,” and that “[she] stated that [trans-identifying males] should have their own locker room.”

In July 2017 the Sports Center issued a statement declaring that trans-identifying males with male genitalia would be permitted in the women’s locker rooms. Moen forwarded information about the woman’s complaint to the Discrimination Board, and as a result, she was investigated for harassment. His harassment suit was supported by Norwegian NGO Legal Aid for Women (Juridisk rådgivning for kvinner; JURK).

“[Moen] experienced being harassed in the changing room,” court records claim, adding that the woman had insinuated that he was “a high-risk potential abuser” and that it had been offensive that she had referred to him as a “biological male.”

The discrimination charge brought against her was ultimately rejected upon appeal. However, although no legal charges were brought against her, the Equality and Discrimination Ombudsman chastised the woman in his statement, and emphasized that at the second meeting in the locker room, she knew that Moen was “legally a woman” and therefore, her confrontation fit the criteria for harassment, “regardless of whether it was [her] intention or not.”

The majority of the Equality and Discrimination tribunal members emphasized “that transgender people are vulnerable and need special protection against harassment,” and the minority concluded that the woman “had no need to react and question [Moen’s] use of the women’s locker room.”

Trans-identifying male Karoline Skarstein wrote an article for the Stavanger Aftenblad at the time praising Moen and calling him a “role model” for entering the locker room and showering in the presence of women.

“Where will Sandra shower? She will shower where she wants to shower. If she feels comfortable in the shower with the other girls, then she should be allowed to use those facilities,” wrote Skarstein.

“Forcing her into a men’s locker room because she has male genitalia would be an assault on her. Trans people are primarily people who have been invisible for far too long and are now stepping out into the world,” Skarstein added.

Skarstein serves as a representative for the Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity (FRI – foreningen for kjønns- og seksualitetsmangfold), the same activist group involved in the litigation against WDI leader Ellingsen.

Since 1997, FRI has been working towards the repeal of sexual paraphilias and fetishes as mental health diagnoses in both Norway and abroad. In 2010, many paraphilia-related diagnoses were removed from Norwegian medical literature, and in 2018 the World Health Organization (WHO) followed suit.

FRI’s campaigns successfully resulted in sadomasochism, transvestic fetishism, and general fetishism being re-classified as variants in sexual arousal in the WHO’s 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases.

A previous report by Reduxx revealed how a former member of FRI had been performing and live-streaming fetishistic castrations via a pay-per-view pornography website.

Reduxx is a newly-launched independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% reader-funded! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.

A notorious transgender pedophile in Scotland was forced out of his house on October 19 following a citizen’s protest against his presence in a public housing complex in which many children resided.

Katie Dolatowski, 22, a trans-identified male, appeared in Kirkcaldy Sheriff’s Court on October 18 after breaching a probation condition which required Dolatowski inform police of his address changes. Dolatowski is a registered sex offender, and his conditions stem from two incidents involving young girls.

On February 8th, 2018, Dolatowski was caught filming a 12-year-old girl in a women’s bathroom at an Asda supermarket in Fife, Scotland. Dolatowski was with a care aide using the women’s restroom and as the pair left, he doubled back alone to film the young girl who was within a cubicle in a state of undress by holding his phone over the cubical wall.  After noticing she was being filmed, the girl screamed for help and Dolatowski ran away. He was later identified on the supermarket’s CCTV and 12 seconds of film of the girl were found on his mobile phone and iPad.

Dolatowski offended again soon after on March 4, when he sexually assaulted a girl in the female toilets at another supermarket in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Dolatowski entered the women’s bathroom at the local Morrisons and grabbed a 10-year-old girl by the face, pushing her in to a toilet cubicle and demanding she remove her trousers. Dolatowski also threatened to murder the girl’s mother in an effort to keep her quiet, but the child bravely punched the predator in self-defense, and ran to get her father who was just outside of the washroom.

Despite his two attacks on children, Dolatowski avoided jail for the incidents, and was instead handed a three-year community order. He was also banned from having contact with children, placed on the sex offenders registry, and ordered to complete community service.

In February of 2019, the Courier revealed that Dolatowski, who was homeless, had been housed in a women’s hostel on the basis of his self-declared gender identity. He did not have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) – a legal document which declares an individual has changed their name and gender.

According to the Courier report, residents in the women’s shelter were horrified by Dolatowski’s placement there.

“This is a women’s hostel and it’s all women who work here. I feel sick and can’t stop thinking about what [she] has done,” one resident is quoted as having said.

Dolatowski appeared in court this week on charges of breaching an order to register his addresses with the Police due to his sex offender status.

According to the Courier, Dolatowski had been living in Leeds, England, but sought a move closer to home in Kirkaldy. He had attempted to seek accommodation through Women’s Aid, but they did not have any housing in the area Dolatowski wanted to live in.

He deliberately did not notify the Police of his return to live with his mother in Kirkcaldy between June and September of this year, with the court stating it was due to his concerns police would not find his new arrangement “suitable.” For the breach in condition, Dolatowski was handed a four month curfew.

Reduxx has learned that the unregistered address Dolatowski had moved into was a public housing complex in which many children were present.

On the night of October 19, enraged neighbors who became aware of Dolatowski’s presence in the complex surrounded the property and demanded he be removed for the safety of the community. Reduxx reviewed phone camera footage taken by a bystander showing a large number of Police, including a Dog Unit, removing Dolatowski and unidentified others from the property.

Members of the public were heard shouting “get the beast out!” And calling attending officers “beast-protectors.”

Speaking to Reduxx, a resident of the Clarimalt Drive complex, who wishes to remain anonymous, expressed that she had been dismayed to learn that Dolatowski had been living in proximity.

“Why they were housed in an estate where every house has two or more kids, most which are under 10 years old, is beyond me,” the resident said. “We didn’t know until a neighbor told us this morning. Nobody knew he was living there until he was spotted coming out the house with his mother.”

Due to the nature of his crimes, Dolatowski is often referenced in discussions about gender self-identification law and its impact on the safety of women and children.

His crimes were even cited by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, in a tweet where she used him as an example to rebut the claims that such incidents have never occurred.

Dolatowski’s case has also been regularly submitted as evidence to the Scottish Government through the ongoing process of reforming the Gender Recognition Act. However, in responding to a policy analyst group assessing the reforms to the Act, one of the representatives in the Scottish Government appeared to claim that the Dolatowski case had been made up.

Reduxx is a newly-launched independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% reader-funded! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.

A man in Spain who beat his female partner for opposing his transition has avoided charges of gender-based violence by legally changing his identification to “female” and adopting a woman’s name.

As legal proceedings are ongoing, the names of those involved cannot be released, and pseudonyms Carmen and Manolo are being used for the purposes of this article.

The couple, who are in their 60s, had been together for 11 years, but it wasn’t until 2020, according to Carmen, that Manolo began pressuring her to participate in his sexual fetish.

“He wanted to wear women’s underwear in intimate moments. I thought it could be a fetish but later he told me that he felt like a woman and asked my permission to take hormones. He never wanted to change sex,” Carmen told El Mundo, explaining that Manolo wanted to take estrogen in order to grow breasts, but expressed a desire to keep his penis.

“I told him that if he wanted that path, I would accompany him… but as a friend, never as a couple because I am heterosexual,” Carmen explained, noting she was simply not attracted to the thought of her partner having breasts.

Due to Carmen’s unstable financial situation, she was unable to move out of the home and into her own residence following Manolo’s revelations. Carmen had attempted to end the relationship, instead telling Manolo she would support him “as a friend,” but it was at that time that the man became increasingly abusive towards her.

Manolo would often attempt to get into bed or the bath with Carmen without her consent, molesting her and verbally abusing her. Carmen then attempted to create a space for herself within the residence by putting a padlock on her bedroom door while she was out of the home.

On August 15, Carmen came home to find her padlock ripped off and her possessions destroyed after Manolo had broken in while she was visiting her grandchildren. An argument broke out between them which culminated in Manolo violently assaulting Carmen.

Carmen went to the hospital and called the local Catalonian police squadron to file a report, only to discover that Manolo had changed his legal gender identity months prior, and therefore could not be charged with gender-based violence — a specific charge which exists in Spain to classify male violence against women. Instead, Manolo could only be charged with domestic violence, which is a broader criminal category that removes the sex distinction.

Gender-based violence charges provide the female victim specific protections and resolutions which can impact divorce or separation proceedings, custody, and other important factors. As a result of Manolo not being charged with gender-based violence, the court cannot provide Carmen with a specific protection order, and will not remove Manolo from the home.

Speaking to Reduxx, Núria González López, one of Carmen’s legal advisors, expressed disappointment with the way the Spanish legal system has handled the case. López and head lawyer Meritxel Cabezón are working with Carmen to help her proceed with the abuse charges.

“The system is making victims available to their abusers,” López said, noting that Carmen is now being “forced to live with her abuser” due to the lesser crime Manolo is being charged with, and her difficult financial situation which makes it impossible for her to move away.

“The abuser’s change of his legal sex means that, in the eyes of the law, the female in the situation is not at risk. This means the victim has fewer rights,” López explained. “Most likely, he will have to pay a fine and there will be no jail time.”

“Women’s safety appears to be less important than men’s feelings.”

Since being charged for injuring Carmen, Manolo has reportedly filed a criminal complaint against his ex-partner for misgendering him.

Earlier this year, Spain’s Cabinet of Ministers approved a new draft law on gender identity, one which allow anyone over the age of 16 to legally change their name and sex without any medical consultation or intervention. Minors between the ages of 14 and 16 will be allowed to change their name and sex with parental consent, and those as young as 12 can do so with a Judge’s authorization.

Known as “The Trans Law,” the Government is now attempting to push through the legislation earlier than expected, leading to some concern it will not be properly debated or assessed.

Reduxx is a newly-launched independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% reader-funded! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.