Commentary

Separating fact from fiction in arrest of trans woman for voyeurism

Separating fact from fiction in arrest of trans woman for voyeurism
Sheriff’s deputies in Idaho arrested a 43-year-old individual for voyeurism Tuesday, after a female customer at the Target store in the Idaho Falls suburb of Ammon complained she was being photographed or recorded on an iPhone by someone in an adjacent fitting booth. She said the person held their iPhone “over top of the barrier between the rooms.”

According to Sgt. Bryan Lovell, a spokesman for the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect is Shauna Patricia Smith. Lovell told LGBTQ Nation Smith is an employee of a local department store. Her accuser, referred to only as “the victim” in court documents, was trying on a swimsuit Monday when she spotted the iPhone. Her mother confronted Smith, say police, and described her as a “white male who was wearing a dress and a blonde wig.”

Surveillance video from Target allegedly showed Smith leaving the store and driving away, and also revealed her car’s license plate, which led the sheriff’s office to her home. A detective identified Smith as transgender based on information he gleaned from Smith’s roommate, according to court documents. Lovell consistently referred to Smith as male because of the name and gender appearing on her legal identification, even though that detective used female pronouns in the sworn affidavit filed with the court.

Smith was booked into the county jail as a male, based on that legal identification. She’s been incarcerated since Tuesday in “special housing,” along with 13 other male prisoners, away from the general population, according to the county jail’s inmate website. She was arraigned via a closed circuit video hookup Wednesday. If convicted, Smith could face up to five years behind bars.

Those are the only facts of the case that are not in dispute.

Given intense national attention on the issue of transgender identity, access to bathrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities, many other details of this case have been twisted, misreported and sensationalized. Readers are being misinformed by a variety of media, from conservative websites to mainstream outlets, including even such venerable institutions as The New York Times.

The exact opposite is true when it comes to the reliable reporting of this publication, The Daily Dot, Buzzfeed, and most significantly, The TransAdvocate. 

Perhaps the most important piece of new information from the last 24 hours was uncovered by The TransAdvocate’s Cristan Williams: that despite several reports that Smith and “the victim” encountered one another in a women’s changing room, there is no such place.

“We contacted the Target store and spoke with staff who described the changing room area. Additionally, we physically visited the store in which the crime took place to verify the information the Target employees provided us.

“The Target store in question has a unisex changing area. Unisex changing areas were rolled out in Target stores years1 prior to Target’s announcement of its trans-inclusive policy.”

Given the facts as we know them, Target’s trans-inclusive policy — which was met with scorn and petitions from anti-LGBTQ forces — has no bearing on this case. But it’s become a talking point, to the level of boasting, among right wing anti-transgender pundits. Rev. Franklin Graham upped the ante against the retail chain Thursday, telling CNS News: “Target is putting their customers at risk” and is “inviting sexual perverts into their stores.”

 

The New York Times reported a Target spokesperson said the Ammon store did not have a unisex fitting area. But the mythbusting site Snopes.com concluded all the facts that are fit to print, or in this case to post, appear not in The Times, but in The TransAdvocate:

“The TransAdvocate web site reported that the incident took place in a unisex changing area rather than a women’s dressing area, as was commonly stated in news accounts…”

“Likely neither the gender status of the suspect or the dressing area was a significant factor in this case. A perpetrator wearing a wig and a dress (as the suspect in this case was) could probably get into a dressing area and take pictures of women without initially raising alarm, regardless of whether the dressing area was women-only or unisex, and regardless of whether the perpetrator was transgender or not.”

The facts as reported by The TransAdvocate were supported by KPVI-TV:

“Shoppers coming out of the store tell KPVI the dressing room is open to anyone, male or female.

“One shopper says, ‘Whether you’re transgender or not it’s kind of scary. Anybody could really do it.'”

Scary, yes, but transgender-related? No, not if anyone could have used an adjacent fitting booth.

That same TV station also reported its staff had interviewed Katie Anderson, Smith’s ex-wife, helping to add extra fodder with some salacious information. Anderson told KPVI she and Smith divorced in January and that her ex-husband was transitioning from male to female. She told the station, off-camera, that was partly why they divorced after eight years. With the addition of the ex-wife’s story, Smith could be seen not just as an alleged voyeur, but as a failed husband.

Word spread like wildfire that Smith admitted to the detective that she filmed videos of women changing clothes, adding more sensationalism and scandal. Detective Zeb Graham quoted Smith as explaining she did that for the “same reason men go online to look at pornography,” that she found it, in Graham’s words, “sexually gratifying.” That detail is contained in the affidavit, which can be found within The TransAdvocate’s report.

KPVI reported that according to Smith’s ex-wife, “although Smith identifies as a woman, he’s still interested in women,” misgendering the suspect, although in the same article the station also referred to Smith with feminine pronouns.

This can be confusing new territory for cisgender, non-LGBT members of the media, many of whom do not understand that gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation, and that it’s not unusual for transgender women to be attracted to women. It’s also not uncommon in America for individuals, male or female, cisgender or transgender, to go to great lengths to find sexual gratification. But secretly recording another individual, especially when they are anticipating privacy in the act of changing clothes, no matter how someone identifies, is illegal. That’s not a “transgender crime;” it’s a felony, a crime that Sgt. Lovell told LGBTQ Nation will be investigated and prosecuted without regard to what he termed “politics.”

At press time, Smith is represented by a public defender, as reported by The Daily Dot, and so Smith’s version of events — except as recorded by Det. Graham — has not yet been told. The best we have so far is a video of her arraignment, which as TDD’s Mary Emily O’Hara observed, shows her to be calm, quiet and coolheaded throughout. Watch the video below.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVm6NKhA6xA&feature=youtu.be

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