A trans-identified male has appeared in court on charges of the brutal murder of his father and the attempted murder of his mother. Tânia Ferrinho, 43, is accused of stabbing his father seventeen times and stabbing his bedridden mother seven times, in a horrific incident that occurred in October of 2022 in Samora Correia, Portugal.
Ferrinho’s case was heard in the Santarém Court, beginning September 13, with closing arguments presented October 4. The court heard how Ferrinho’s elderly parents, Carlos and Maria Cristina, had suffered numerous instances of violence at the hands of their son, and had already taken out a court order banning him from approaching them.
Sources of the conflict between Ferrinho and his parents were said to have centered around his sex change procedures, which they disapproved of. Ferrinho began to identify as transgender in 2020, when he legally changed his name to Tânia.
Another significant source of tension related to finances, as Ferrinho reportedly had never worked or held down a stable job and was living at home dependent on his aging parent’s resources. Ana Gomes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office told the court that the relationship was strained due to the “inertia of the defendant” in finding a job while using his parent’s income for “online shopping.”
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office Indictment Order, the brutal assault occurred after Ferrinho was named in a new domestic violence case by his parents, who were attempting to have him expelled from their apartment.
On September 26, 2022, just weeks before the crime took place, Ferrinho posted a video to his Facebook account wherein he claimed to be a victim of stalking, and made a vague comment seeming to suggest that his parents could “accuse me of prostitution as a way of keeping the house.”
On the day of the crime, October 10, Ferrinho is said to have engaged in an argument with his parents related to money. He demanded an allowance, which his parents refused to provide. Shortly after, the National Republican Guard (GNR) visited the family’s home to inform Ferrinho that another case was being filed against him for abuse at the Benavente Court. Ferrinho was already on probation for a 2021 double conviction of aggravated physical assault against his elderly parents, reported Rede Regional.
Just after law enforcement left the premises, Ferrinho began slashing his 77 year-old father repeatedly with a knife, who fled into the apartment building’s hallway before falling to the ground. He succumbed to his injuries in December while being treated at the Vila Franca de Xira Hospital.
After stabbing his father seventeen times, Ferrinho then turned on his mother, who was bedridden and in poor health, and began assaulting her with the knife. A neighbor who had heard shouting from their apartment intervened and prevented Ferrinho from murdering his mother. The neighbor later stated that Ferrinho had initially attempted to frame his father for the assault on his mother. While she was not fatally wounded by the stabbing, she would later die of illness shortly after her husband.
In the final deliberations of the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office attempted to rationalize the murder as being the result of “the inner conflict” presented by Ferrinho’s transgender identity. Gomes stated that there is “sensitivity to understanding the inner conflict of someone who, from a young age, does not identify with the gender they were born with.”
However, Gomes further added that “[he] did not show any remorse” for the crime, and asked for a sentence which considered the gravity of the offense.
Lawyer Maria João Alves, defending, argued that the killing occurred following a series of traumatic events, including his “gender change” and the death of his older brother, which allegedly caused him to suffer from “psychotic outbursts and sometimes interruptions of consciousness.” Alves claimed that Ferrinho was in a psychotic state when he stabbed his parents.
“I have the greatest doubts that Tânia had committed this act consciously and I am certain that [he] was never helped,” Alves said. Ferrinho was “unable to control [his] impulses” at the time of the crime, the lawyer said, and requested that the Court’s sentencing take into account his personal circumstances.
The Court will deliver a sentence on October 18.
Ferrinho’s case first became known to the wider public after media reported that female prison guards had refused to conduct strip searches on him during his detention in a women’s prison. Despite retaining a male sexual organ, Ferrinho demanded to be searched by women guards at the Tires Prison Establishment.
The women employed at the prison refused, because “the procedure involved biologically seeing a person of a different sex and seeing a penis,” said the president of the Association of Heads of the Guard Corps Prison, Hermínio Barradas.
After an hour, two female guards ultimately conducted the search “under protest.”
Portugal passed a law allowing sex self-identification in 2018, but Ferrinho’s case is said to be the first known instance of a clash between female prison staff and a violent trans-identified male inmate. Reports of the incident note that the guards “fear the arrival of new transgender inmates.”
Ana Aresta, president of ILGA (Intervenção Lesbica, Gay, Bissexual, Trans e Intersexo) told the media at the time that the sex self-identification legislation was correctly implemented by prison staff. “People don’t have to pass through any kind of process of surgical affirmation to be considered men or women,” she said.
However, Barradas disagreed, and stated that the law does not require female prison guards to strip search male inmates who have not undergone genital surgery. Yet according to reports, an internal document circulated within Portugal’s prison system states that a transgender inmate must be searched “by a member of the surveillance and security service of the same gender with which the transgender person identifies” even if they retain their sexual organ.
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