A 21-year-old trans woman, Ciara Watkin, has been found guilty of sexual assault after a court heard she did not tell the man she was dating that she was not assigned female at birth. 

The BBC reports that Ciara Watkin told the man she was on her period to stop him finding out she had not yet had gender confirmation surgery. The court heard that she had identified as female and used the name Ciara since the age of 13.

Prosecutors argued that the man was unable to make “informed consent”, after he claimed he wouldn’t have had sexual contact with Watkin had he known she was trans.

When Watkin later revealed that information, the man filed a complaint with police telling officers had he known, he would not have met her as he did “not swing that way”.

The jury reached a guilty verdict after just one hour of deliberations following a two-day trial. She will be sentenced on 10 October and was ordered to sign the sex offenders register within three days. 

Updated Crown Prosecution Service “deception as to sex” guidance

Ciara Watkin’s conviction comes in the wake of a recent update to the Crown Prosecution Service’s “deception as to sex”, previously “deception as to gender”, guidance.

The “deception as to gender” guidance initially arose following the case of McNally v R. [2013] EWCA Crim 1051 when the Court determined that “depending on the circumstances, deception as to gender can vitiate consent”.

In 2013, Justine McNally, 18, entered an online relationship with another young woman, using the name Scott McNally. When they met in person McNally continued to present as Scott and they engaged in sexual activity. She was convicted of six counts of assault by penetration.

The revised CPS guidance was updated following a public consultation that ran for twelve weeks and ended on 8 December 2022. Also, in 2023, a Policy Exchange paper titled The Crown Prosecution Service’s approach to transgenderism: legally inaccurate and ideologically captured was published which claimed that the CPS “is heavily influenced by partisan and heavily ideological beliefs about gender identity.”

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Policy Exchange is a British think tank based in London described as “highly influential” by OpenDemocracy. However, the sources of its £3,951,594 annual funding are unclear. Policy Exchange was rated as “highly opaque” in a 2016 report, noting that it is one of only a “handful of think tanks that refuse to reveal even the identities of their donors.”

The CPS said that they received 409 responses to the 2022 consultation in total, including from “gender critical stakeholders, women’s rights groups and lesbian and gay persons.” They stated: “We have given careful consideration to all of the responses received and have made significant revisions to the final version of the guidance.”

The CPS subsequently changed the wording of the guidance to “deception as to sex” instead of “deception as to gender” and clarified that the guidance applies to suspects who are trans and non-binary.

In their summary of the changes, CPS also note: “We have clarified that there is no onus or responsibility on a complainant to confirm or discover the sex or gender identity of the suspect, and we have made extensive revisions to the factors to consider in relation to whether the complainant was deceived.”