Zurich court sentences trans woman for assaulting punter
Published: Thursday, Jan 18th 2024, 18:50
Updated At: Thursday, Jan 18th 2024, 18:50
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The Zurich District Court has found a 20-year-old trans woman guilty of attempted grievous bodily harm following a knife attack on a punter. It imposed a conditional prison sentence of two years and a five-year ban from the country.
The Romanian woman, who has been in preventive detention for almost a year, will be handed over to the migration office and deported after the verdict next Monday, as the judge stated in his ruling. This is provided that the public prosecutor's office does not submit any new applications for detention by then.
With the exception of a short period of time, everything was actually clear in the case heard by the Zurich District Court on Thursday: On March 9, 2023, a man entered the small apartment of a trans woman working as a sex worker in Zurich and left four minutes later naked and bleeding, as a surveillance camera in the entrance area of the property showed.
The blood came - this was also undisputed - from a kitchen knife with which the trans woman had stabbed the suitor several times in the thigh. However, two versions of what happened during the four minutes were presented in court.
Attack or self-defense?
The man had arranged a meeting with a sex worker, the prosecutor stated in her indictment. He had assumed that it was a woman who would satisfy him orally. But when she then refused to take off her underpants, he realized that she was a trans woman.
When the punter then demanded his money back, the 100 francs he had already handed over, the 20-year-old suddenly stabbed the man three times in the thigh with a kitchen knife.
The man was curious and knew what he was getting himself into, the defendant said in court. He had already asked about the size of her penis in previous chats.
When she then pulled down her underpants, however, he reacted strangely; he was probably unhappy about her reduced penis size after seven years of taking hormones, said the 20-year-old. He choked her and pulled her hair. In mortal fear, she grabbed a knife lying on the floor and stabbed him once, twice or three times until he let her go and she was able to lock herself in the bathroom.
No evidence - some circumstantial evidence
The defense lawyer stated in her plea that there was a lack of reliable evidence for the prosecution's version of events. "It is highly unlikely that this is what happened." Rather, it was a situation of self-defense. Her client should be acquitted of the charge of assault and released from preventive detention immediately.
The public prosecutor, on the other hand, classified the trans woman's statements as not beyond all doubt; they were not logical and showed fractures. No injuries were found on her neck, head or torso, and all her artificial fingernails were intact. "That speaks against combat operations."
The punter did not suffer any acutely life-threatening injuries as a result of the stabbing, the public prosecutor continued. However, it was only by chance that no artery had been caught. The woman was sentenced to three and a half years' imprisonment and a seven-year ban from the country for attempted grievous bodily harm.
Motive does not matter
Whether the punter knew whether he was meeting a woman or a trans woman was ultimately irrelevant to the court. The dangerous stab wounds were inflicted and there was no self-defense situation, the judge stated.
Like the public prosecutor, he referred to contradictory statements. For example, the judge noted that surveillance camera footage showed that the man had stormed out of the apartment naked and bleeding. If the woman had locked herself in the bathroom as she had claimed, he would probably have put his clothes on briefly.
©Keystone/SDA
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