Aug
31
Teen gets probation for attacking transsexual
Filed Under crime, single stories |
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post on Friday, Aug. 31, 2007.
By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The teen who severely beat a preoperative transsexual on Palm Beach was sentenced to four and a half months of probation Thursday.
Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc rejected recommendations from prosecutors and the Department of Juvenile Justice, who said the teen was likely to commit more crimes and should be locked in a high-security residential program.
The teen, then 17, was out with his best friend on Clematis Street in July 2006 when they met the victim, a 39-year-old who has breast implants and has lived as a woman for more than a decade. They went to Palm Beach and were about to have sex when the 17-year-old said he discovered that she had a male organ.
He initially left with his friend, then went back and beat the victim. A witness who was in the lifeguard tower at the public beach that night testified that he slammed the victim’s head into the lifeguard stand so hard that he could feel it shake.
She was covered in blood, lost teeth and was taken to the hospital.
Blanc said he didn’t believe the teen’s argument of self-defense and said there was no excusing the violent beating that got him the charge of aggravated battery.
But he disagreed that the teen, now 18, is a threat to public safety, and withheld adjudication on the case. The circumstances of the case were so unusual that he is unlikely to find himself in a similar situation again, Blanc said.
The teen’s father was outraged that prosecutors did not charge the transsexual for sexual contact with a 17-year-old, a second-degree felony. The case was complicated by the fact that the beating victim did not appear to testify against the teen, and did not respond to calls or a certified letter from prosecutors asking what sentence she thought he should receive.
The teen said they had oral sex in a car on the way to the beach. She denies any sexual contact with him, but said in a deposition there might have been some kissing.
The teen made a tearful plea to the judge, saying that he had already served a year of house arrest and wanted to get back to a normal life.
“I was wrong,” he said. “But he did wrong to me.”
In 2003, the teen was charged with mooning another boy while they were wrestling. And after being put on house arrest for the beating charge, he was charged again with violating a judge’s orders by going out drinking with a friend.
His attorney, John Brewer, said the state attorney had already offered probation in an earlier plea deal for the beating, but the family did not want to accept it. The assistant state attorney in the case, Sarah Willis, told the judge she was unaware of that offer.
Blanc said there were many wrongs in the case. He told the teen he was wrong to be out drinking and looking to have sex with a stranger. It also was wrong for a 39-year-old to get involved with a 17-year-old, and wrong to have sex with someone under circumstances he wouldn’t have agreed to.
But the biggest wrong, Blanc said, was for the teen to respond with violence.
Blanc ordered him to finish high school, get a part-time job, go to counseling, perform community service and avoid the victim.
He also will have a curfew and remain on probation until he turns 19 in January.
Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 31, 2007 Friday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 533 words