A Bum Rap

Today’s blogs are both from the Rolling Stone; the first is about CeCe McDonald, the trans-woman who was convicted of murder for defending herself.

It happened one night in Minneapolis, CeCe was walking down the street that night when she was attacked by skin heads calling her names and one of them hitting her with a bottle in the head. Her trial was stacked against her when the judge ruled her defense couldn’t talk about the man she killed in self-defense had previous violent crimes or the Nazi tattoo. She had a choice 40 years in jail or plea-bargaining the charges down to second-degree manslaughter. She took the deal.

She severed 19 months in jail plus the time she waited for her trial and she was released early for good behavior. She did her time in a men’s prison.

She had a trouble life growing up, according to the Rolling Stone article,

CeCe had always tried staying in her mom's good graces by being a responsible, diligent child, constantly neatening the house, making the beds and whipping up recipes inspired by cooking shows, but nonetheless she felt her mother grow distant. CeCe was unable to find sanctuary with her family, and tensions grew in the crowded three-bedroom house. One day, an uncle found an undelivered love note she'd written to a boy and, CeCe says, knocked her to the kitchen floor and choked her. She ran away from home, never to return. She was 14.

She crashed with friends before taking up residence in a glorified drug den where other runaways congregated. CeCe tried to see the bright side of her family's rejection: She was finally free to be herself. The first time she tried on a bra and panties, she felt a shiver of recognition that she was headed in the right direction. Instead, she fell right through a trapdoor. She'd reached a crucial point in the too-typical trans woman's narrative, in which, cut loose at a young age from family, she falls directly into harm's way… CeCe grew up fast. "Honey, I think there's not too much in this world that I haven't heard or seen or done," she tells me. "And a lot of that is sad."

Jane Doe who is being held is following the same path as all too many other trans-youth, from a dysfunctional family she was forced in to prostitution when she was a pre-teen and CeCe was forced in to live off the streets when she was fifteen. I have to stop and wonder how will Jane Doe turn out when the system throws her out at 18, will she be like CeCe and earn her GED and go on to college or will she end up back in prison? DCF is threating to press charges and try her in adult court for the incident that involved her and three other girls.
…Despite a strong network of friends, and the continued affections of her boyfriend – both lifelines to her – she's struggling. She has residual PTSD and trust issues. She's unemployed, and with a felony on her record, she's less hopeful about the job applications she's been filling out. For now, CeCe is living on food stamps and the remaining funds raised by the Free CeCe campaign; for her housing, she's crashing with a kind supporter in a small spare bedroom.