My male rapist claimed to be a woman so cops, lawyers and judges called him she – that’s unfair, only men can commit rape

It was early summer 2021 when 17-year-old Freddie Trenchard invited 14-year-old Anna to his home.

He assured her that his mother and her boyfriend were there.

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At this point, Anna* had known Trenchard for two years.

When she was in his room, where they would probably be watching TV, he started touching her thighs and waist.

“I kept telling him to stop,” says Anna, crying and shaking about the terrible events.

“But he forced me to have sex.”

Anna tells me: “It wasn’t a sexual thing or a loving thing.

“He wanted dominance over me.

“He choked me and did things that men see in porn.”

When it was over, Anna tearfully tried to get dressed.

She says, “I’m bleeding. . . it was so painful. . . I sat on his bed, I cried, I held the sheet over myself, I was hysterical.”

But Trenchard acted as if he had done nothing wrong and told her to leave before she made any more fuss.

As Anna left the house on the picturesque Channel island of Guernsey, limping and bleeding, Trenchard’s mother asked her if she was OK.

He answered for her, “She’s fine.”

Then he pushed her through the garden gate and closed it behind 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 took a pregnancy test – and I was so scared.”

She didn’t tell anyone else until she finally confided in her sister seven months later.

Shortly afterwards, Anna learned that Trenchard had been talking to one of her best childhood friends.

She “just freaked out” 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 took a screenshot of it and showed it to Anna’s mother.

Anna didn’t want to talk about it at first, but later called her mother at school and said: “Come and pick me up, I’ll tell you everything.”

She did so and reported it to the police that night in February 2022.

Trenchard is now 20 and goes by the name Alyssa Christine Trenchard – although he hasn’t legally changed his name or had surgery.

When he raped Anna, his only physical step toward transition was to wear women’s clothing.

But at the time of his arrest, Guernsey Police recorded that he was a woman.

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This set the tone for lawyers and other legal experts to describe the attack as being committed by a “transgender woman” with “her penis.”

And by clarifying in court that Trenchard was “biologically male” at the time of the rape, the prosecutor suggested that this was no longer true by the time of the trial.

In court, Anna refused to use female pronouns.

But despite Trenchard revealing (on TikTok) that he becomes sexually aroused when referred to as “Miss,” Judge Catherine Fooks agreed from the start that all court officials should call him “Miss Trenchard.”

After Trenchard complained that she was referred to as a “transgender man” in the summary, Judge Fooks even reconvened the court at the conclusion of the trial – to deliberate, to apologize for her mistake and to reassure him that the file would be amended to reflect his desire to be referred to as a “transgender woman.”

Trenchard’s lawyer claimed that no sexual intercourse occurred and that the victim was motivated by transphobia.

Anna describes this as “the dirtiest trick of actually calling someone bigoted” – as she says it’s completely untrue, she has previously dated a transsexual and has friends who identify as such.

She adds: “I have no problem with that at all. But only men can commit rape. Why pretend it’s anything else?”

She is angry. Trenchard tried to claim his behavior was because he was being bullied because of his transsexuality.

Anna says: “He had just started dressing up as a woman.

“The worst thing was that in court he tried to use the fact that he identified as a woman to say that he should be treated like a woman. He knew the difficulties of being a woman. How dare he?

“If he says, ‘I’m a woman,’ but then rapes someone, that’s unfair to real transsexuals and to women.”

“I am not transphobic.

“I knew him when he was a boy, before he changed.

“His penis raped me, it was attached to him.

“He controlled it.”

Anna describes herself as someone who used to be very outgoing.

She says, “I would dance, act and do other activities every day.”

But she adds: “I stopped visiting everything. I don’t feel comfortable going out anymore, especially when I’m on stage in front of so many people.”

Earlier this year, before the trial, Anna overdosed.

She was self-harming, deeply depressed and anxious.

The worst thing was that in court he tried to use the fact that he identified as a woman to say that he should be treated like a woman and that he knew the difficulties of being a woman. How dare he?

Victim Anna

She wasn’t sleeping.

She says: “I didn’t go out much.

“I wore baggy clothes, stopped eating, changed everything, changed my hairstyle and started piercing myself.

“I didn’t want to look anything like I did when he touched me.”

She is aware that she was barely a teenager while he was almost an adult at 17.

She tells me: “He knew exactly what he was doing and had planned it.

“Losing my virginity was terrible for me.

“I didn’t have a choice, but I wanted it to be special.”

But she adds: “I didn’t have the opportunity to decide when and with whom this happened.”

Anna felt “inhuman” and wondered if this was normal – what it was like to have sex for the first time.

But then as friends got older, they would say things like, “Oh my God, I had the most incredible experience.” . .”

“Load off your shoulders”

Then she knew.

She says: “My first time wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“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 coming forward.

She says: “It was a big deal for me to tell someone and it took a lot of weight off my shoulders.

“I’m not going through this alone right now.

“At least someone knows what he did and believes me.”

On July 28 last year, Trenchard was convicted of rape following a trial at Guernsey’s Royal Court and has since been sentenced to three years in juvenile detention at the island’s Les Nicolles prison.

This prison houses mixed prisoners during the day.

But women and men are separated to sleep, and the governor clarified yesterday that “a pre-op trans inmate” would be housed in men’s quarters.

Guernsey Women’s Rights Network co-ordinator Jane Roper, who attended both the trial and sentencing, was horrified to hear details of the attack.

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She says: “It is beneath the dignity of the court to refer to a convicted rapist as ‘she’ and ‘her’ and it is confusing to hear that after a few months on HRT patches he now has ‘both male and female genitalia.’ ‘ has.”

WRN wrote to Judge Fooks asking why she 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, “After he’s convicted, he’ll think twice about doing this.”

“I am a survivor, not a victim.”

When she learned he had been found guilty, she felt like “every grin he gave me I just rubbed it back into his face.”

The jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict in less than an hour, but then Trenchard was released for three months pending sentencing – a convicted rapist could enjoy his freedom while his victim was afraid to leave the house in case he was encountered.

Trenchard also sought leave to appeal on uncertain grounds, but this was granted at taxpayer expense.

His appeal failed, but he had subjected his victim and his family to the horror of another trial.

Even though he claimed to be innocent – meaning he had to subject the family to a hellish trial and give Anna time on the witness stand to repeat statements she had already made on video – the judge gave him the maximum reduction in sentence possible.

In sentencing, probation officers claimed that Trenchard was “unlikely to commit another crime”, presumably because he now claims to be a woman.

But Anna, visibly emotional, asks: “Why should asserting a transgender identity mean that rapists are treated differently?”

“Rape is a terrible crime, whoever claims it.”

• That’s not her real name