Home secretary says police force ‘playing identity politics’ in transgender criminal row

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The home secretary accused a police force of “playing identity politics and denying biology” after it said “hateful comments” about a transgender criminal would not be tolerated.

Days after her plea for officers to eschew “symbolic gestures”, Suella Braverman said Sussex Police should “focus on catching criminals not policing pronouns” after the force lashed out online against comments regarding the case of a woman who sexually abused children years before transitioning.

Sally Ann Dixon, of Swanmore Avenue, Havant, Hampshire, was jailed for 20 years at Lewes Crown Court on 8 September after being convicted of 30 indecent assaults, Sussex Police said.

The force said the crimes, against five girls and two boys, took place between 1989 to 1996, when Dixon was known as John Stephen Dixon. The 58-year-old transitioned to female in 2004, it added.

Some people on Twitter objected to the force referring to Dixon in its press release as a convicted woman as her crimes took place before she transitioned.

Sussex Police tweeted that it does not “tolerate any hateful comments towards their gender identity regardless of crimes committed”.

“This is irrelevant to the crime that has been committed and investigated,” it added.

Responding to one Twitter user who said she was exercising her gender-critical views, the force directed her to its website to learn what is regarded as hate, adding: “If you have gender critical views you wish to express this can be done on other platforms or your own page, not targeted at an individual.”

In response, Ms Braverman tweeted: “Sussex-police have done well to put a dangerous criminal behind bars.

“But they’ve got it wrong by playing identity politics and denying biology. Focus on catching criminals not policing pronouns.”

Tuesday’s confrontation was not the first between Ms Braverman and the police in her early weeks as home secretary. She told police forces in an open letter on Saturday that there was a perception forces spent too much time on “symbolic gestures” rather than “actually fighting criminals”.

She was not alone in criticising Sussex Police, however. Karen Ingala Smith, who founded Femicide Census, an organisation which provides information on women who have been killed by men in the UK, said: “The sex of the perpetrator certainly is not irrelevant in crimes of sexual violence against children, for example, rates of perpetration differ hugely by sex.

“Moreover, if crimes committed by males are recorded as crimes by females then policy based on crime data will be hopeless.”

Frances Crook, former chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, now co-convenor of the Commission on Political Power, said 15,000 men are in prison convicted of sex crimes, compared to around 100 women.

Sussex Police later apologised for its response and clarified Dixon’s offences had been recorded as being committed by a man.

Dixon, who will be subject to a sexual harm prevention order indefinitely, was also found not guilty of four indecent assaults.