My male rapist claimed to be a woman so cops, lawyers & judge all called him she – it’s unfair, only men can commit rape
IT was early summer in 2021 when 17-year-old Freddie Trenchard invited Anna, 14, into his home.
He reassured her his mum and her boyfriend were there.
At the time, Anna* had known Trenchard for two years.
Once she was in his room, where she thought they would watch TV, he started touching her thighs and waist.
“I repeatedly told him to stop,” says Anna, crying and shaking as she recounts the horrific events.
“But he forced me to have sex.”
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Anna tells me: “It wasn’t a sexual or a loving thing.
“He wanted dominance over me.
“He was choking me, and doing things men see in porn.”
When it was over, Anna tried, through her tears, to get dressed.
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She says: “I’m bleeding . . . it was so painful . . . I was sat on his bed, I was crying, I was holding the sheet over me, I was hysterical.”
But Trenchard acted as if he had done nothing wrong, telling her to leave before she made more fuss.
As Anna left the house on the picturesque Channel Island of Guernsey, limping and bleeding, Trenchard’s mum asked her if she was all right.
He replied for her, saying: “She’s fine.”
He then pushed her through the garden gate, closing it after her.
Anna went home, threw away her clothes and hid in her room.
A day or two later, she told a friend what had happened.
She says: “I was so scared.
“I thought it was my fault.
“I did a pregnancy test — and was so scared”.
She did not tell anyone else until seven months later, when she finally confided in her sister.
Shortly after that, Anna discovered Trenchard had been chatting up one of her best childhood friends.
She “just flipped”, and posted on her social media: “He’s dangerous, stay away from him”.
‘Dirtiest trick’
The mother of one of Anna’s friends saw this, then screen-shot it and showed it to Anna’s mum.
Anna was initially reluctant to talk about it but called her mum later from school, saying: “Come and pick me up, I’ll tell you everything.”
She did, and reported it to police that night, in February 2022.
Trenchard is now 20 and goes by the name Alyssa Christine Trenchard — although he has neither changed his name legally nor had surgery.
When he raped Anna, his only physical step towards transitioning had been to wear women’s clothes.
Yet at the time of his arrest, Guernsey Police recorded him as a woman.
This set the tone for lawyers and other legal professionals to describe the attack as having been committed by a “transgender female” with “her penis”.
And by specifying in court that Trenchard was “biologically male” at the time of the rape, the prosecutor implied that by the time of the trial this was no longer true.
In court, Anna refused to use female pronouns.
But even though Trenchard has revealed [on TikTok] that he becomes sexually aroused when referred to as “Miss”, Judge Catherine Fooks agreed at the outset that all court officials should call him “Miss Trenchard”.
After Trenchard complained about being referred to as a “transgender male” in the summing up, Judge Fooks even reconvened the court after proceedings had finished — for deliberation, to apologise for her mistake and to reassure him that the record would be changed to comply with his wish to be described as “transgender female”.
Trenchard’s lawyer claimed sexual intercourse had not taken place and the victim was motivated by transphobia.
Anna describes this as “the dirtiest trick, to actually refer to somebody as bigoted” — as she says it is completely untrue, she dated a trans person previously and has friends who identify as such.
She adds: “I don’t have a problem with that at all. But only men can commit rape. Why pretend otherwise?”
She is furious Trenchard tried to claim his behaviour was down to being bullied for being trans.
Anna says: “All he had done was start dressing as a woman.
“The worst thing was that in court he was trying to use the fact he identified as a woman to say he should be treated like a woman, he knew the struggles of being a woman. How dare he?
“When he says, ‘I’m a woman’ but then rapes someone, it’s unfair against the trans people who are genuine, and against women.
“I’m not transphobic.
“I knew him when he was a guy before he had transitioned.
“His penis raped me, it was attached to him.
“He controlled it.”
Anna describes herself as someone who used to be very sociable.
She says: “I’d be dancing and acting and doing activities every day.”
But she adds: “I stopped going to everything. I don’t feel right going out any more, especially being on stage in front of that many people.”
At the beginning of the year, before the trial, Anna took an overdose.
She was self-harming, deeply depressed and anxious.
The worst thing was in court he was trying to use the fact he identified as a woman to say he should be treated like one, that he knew the struggles of being a woman. How dare he?
Victim Anna
She was not sleeping.
She says: “I didn’t go out much.
“I wore baggy clothes, stopped eating, changed everything, changed my hair, started piercing myself.
“I did not want to look anything like how I did when he touched me.”
She is well aware she was barely a teenager, while he at 17, was almost an adult.
She tells me: “He knew exactly what he was doing and had planned it.
“Losing my virginity was horrible for me.
“I didn’t have a choice, but I had wanted it to have been special.”
But she adds: “I didn’t have the chance to choose when or who that happened with.”
Anna felt “unhuman” and wondered if this was normal — what the first time having sex was like.
But then, as friends started getting older, they were saying things like, “Oh my God, I had the most amazing experience . . .”
‘Weight off shoulders’
Then she knew.
She says: “That’s not what my first time should have been like.
“It made me feel disgusting and dirty, and I blamed myself for so long, but it’s not my fault.”
Anna is now proud of herself for having come forward.
She says: “Telling anyone was such a big thing for me, and it did take a lot of weight off my shoulders.
“I’m not going through this alone now.
“At least someone’s aware of what he’s done, and believes me.”
On July 28 last year, Trenchard was convicted of rape, following a trial at Guernsey’s Royal Court, and he has since been sentenced to three years’ youth detention at the island’s Les Nicolles Prison.
This jail is mixed-sex during the day.
But women and men are separated for sleeping, and the governor clarified yesterday that “a pre-operative trans prisoner” would be accommodated in male quarters.
Jane Roper, the co-ordinator of Guernsey Women’s Rights Network, who attended both the trial and sentencing, was horrified to hear details of the attack.
She says: “It is beneath the dignity of the court to refer to a convicted rapist as ‘she’ and ‘her’, and bewildering to hear he now has ‘both male and female genitalia’ after a few months of HRT patches.”
The WRN wrote to Judge Fooks, asking why she had referred to a rapist as “she” and “Miss”.
She replied that they were following the Bench Guidelines “in the interest of fairness”.
Meanwhile, Anna says: “Now he’s been convicted, he’ll think twice about doing this.
“I’m a survivor, not a victim.”
When she knew he had been found guilty, she felt that “every smirk he’s given me, I’ve just rubbed right back in his face”.
The jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict, in less than an hour, yet Trenchard was then released for three months pending sentencing — leaving a convicted rapist to enjoy freedom while his victim was scared to leave the house in case she encountered him.
Trenchard also asked for leave to appeal, on shaky grounds, yet this was allowed at taxpayers’ expense.
His appeal failed but he had subjected his victim and her family to the horror of another court proceeding.
Despite the fact he claimed he was innocent — so putting the family through the hell of a trial and subjecting Anna to time on the stand repeating evidence she had already given on video — the judge gave him the maximum sentencing reduction possible.
At sentencing, probation services claimed Trenchard would be “unlikely to commit any other offence”, presumably because he now claims to be a woman.
But Anna, clearly emotional, asks: “Why should claiming transgender identity mean rapists are treated differently?
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“Rape is a terrible crime whoever they say they are.”
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