Last week, Hannah Tubbs, a 26-year-old violent offender, pleaded guilty to molesting a 10-year-old girl in a women’s restroom in California in 2014. Tubbs, who is genetically male, began identifying as female after being taken into custody.
At the time of the sexual assault, Tubbs (then aged 17) managed to evade arrest. It wasn’t until 2019, upon being charged for an unrelated crime, that DNA testing linked Tubbs to the child molestation case. Tubbs has an extensive history of offenses spanning multiple states, including being charged for drug possession, battery, and violating probation, along with being arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor (for which Tubbs wasn’t prosecuted) and being convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.
For the moment, Tubbs has been sentenced to two years in a female juvenile facility (yes, you read that accurately) due to fears that Tubbs would experience victimization “in an adult facility as a transgender woman.” The Los Angeles County District Attorney has stated that juvenile offenders’ brains are not fully developed, and they can be rehabilitated in juvenile detention. In addition to being housed alone, Tubbs won’t be placed on the sex offender registry.
I can’t speak to this specific case, but as someone who has previously worked with sexual offenders, I can tell you that career criminals tend to be the most resistant to effective rehabilitation. When a sex offender has multiple victims, and those victims are strangers to the offender, this is also not a good sign.
Self-identifying as female isn’t unheard of in the correctional system as we’ve seen time and time again. Male violent offenders and rapists have been given special accommodations because they identify as women, and presumably, those in charge of these provisions are afraid of transgender activists. Has anyone stopped to ask how everyday transgender people feel about this? And what message does this send to victims and women?
Really, I’m surprised that every single male offender hasn’t taken it upon himself to do the same. If not for the purpose of obtaining access to female victims, they will have an easier time being housed among women or alone — safe from male offenders who pose a larger threat to them.
This mentality is evident among Scottish “transgender” prisoners who return to identifying as male when they are released into the community.
But here’s the thing: If an offender is laughing the entire time they are serving their sentence, it has no purpose.
Dr. Debra Soh is a sex neuroscientist, the host of The Dr. Debra Soh Podcast, and the author of The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society.
