AU, UK — . The person charged with torturing, beating and slashing the throat of a lover’s dog in Marrickville, Sydney was reported earlier this month to be 24-year-old woman Olivia Sindel.

But read further down, reports of the court hearing on charges of causing the death of an animal, stalking or intimidating, contravening an apprehended violence order, using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend and of breaching bail – and the defence lawyer refers to “problems relating to her gender re-assignment surgery”.

It’s the latest example of a crime committed by transgender-identified male being attributed to women. So common is it now for news reports to falsely attribute violent and sexual crimes to ‘women’ that the website Trans Crime UK has produced a short film, These Are Not Our Crimes, charting the crimes of 71 males – but reported as being committed by women. Among the cases it features are:

John/Julie Marshall, who was convicted of holding 80,000 indecent images of children. His case was reported as being by a ‘woman’ even though court the recorded his gender as ‘male’.

Carol Lea, who was convicted of violently assaulting a teenager with a hammer following a dispute in a KFC carpark.

Joshua/Leah Harvey convicted of five counts of attempting to incite a girl into sexual activity in Caerphilly, Wales.

Anthony/Toni Prince convicted of possession of extreme pornographic images, making indecent images of children and possession of prohibited images of children aged between five and 13.

John/Jayde Clowting convicted of assault after attacking another trans-identified man in a bar in Bristol.

Callum/Sheridan Hughes convicted of two assault charges after attacking his parents.

Tylah-Jo Bryan, Amarnih Lewis-Daniel and Michael O’Docherty/Tamzi Lush convicted of violent disorder after kicking and stamping on a teenager’s head outside a London tube station.

It is not just news reports that are falsely recording perpetrators’ sex. Concerns are being raised that the integrity of crime statistics, which until now have reflected the fact men commit almost all violent and sexual crime, is at risk.

In 2017-18 in England and Wales 94% of convicted murders and 97% of sex offenders were male.Office of National Statistics

Police forces are now recording even suspected and convicted rapists as female if they no longer wish to identify with their male birth sex. A Freedom of Information Request by the campaign group Fair Play for Women in 2019 found that at least 11 English police forces record gender in line with the perpetrator’s wishes – even for the crime of rape.

You can’t get much more of a male crime than rape. It would be highly offensive to a woman who was raped to have it written down that her attacker was a female when clearly that was a male with a penis.Dr Nicola Williams, Fair Play for Women

Joan McAlpine, Member of the Scottish Parliament has said the recording of crime in Scotland by gender self-identification is “extremely concerning” and risks skewing crime statistics.

Aside from the statistical corruption, I cannot be the only woman who finds it deeply offensive that male sexual violence can ever be badged as a female crime. It’s another example of self-identification being introduced by the back door in response to publicly-funded lobby groups.Joan McAlpine MSP

Alice Sullivan, Professor of Sociology and Principal Investigator of 1970 British Cohort Study, University College London, says: “There is lots of data on how sex matters but we are now seeing a lot of confusion in data collection between sex, gender, and gender identity.”

Without accurate data we can’t design evidence-based policies. Policy capture and silencing is preventing rational discussions and normal scientific processes.Prof Alice Sullivan, speaking at Women’s Liberation 2020