A mother-of-two who called a transgender woman a ‘pig in a wig’ has been convicted of sending offensive tweets as protestors assembled outside court.
Kate Scottow, 39, was today found guilty of persistently making use of a public communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience, and anxiety to Stephanie Hayden, 48, between September 2018 and last May.
The ‘radical feminist’ was accused of deliberately ‘misgendering’ Ms Hayden by referring to her as ‘he’ or ‘him’ during a period of ‘significant online abuse’.
Ms Scottow had been arrested by police officers last year at her home in Pirton near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in front of her daughter, 10, and son, 20 months.
Though Ms Scottow’s lawyer Diana Wilson claimed that Ms Hayden was a ‘serial complainant’ with past convictions, and had benefitted from an alleged police failure to investigate the case properly, the judge found Ms Scottow guilty.
Kate Scottow (pictured) was today found guilty of persistently making use of a public communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience, and anxiety to transgender woman Stephanie Hayden between September 2018 and last May
District Judge Margaret Dodd told Ms Scottow that she made deliberate and persistent use of male pronouns, and had caused Ms Hayden ‘needless anxiety’.
In a statement, Ms Hayden said: ‘Today there are no winners. While I am satisfied with the outcome of the criminal prosecution, the fact remains that it should not have been necessary to ever complain to the police in the first place.
‘Abusing and smearing transgender people online must stop.’
She added: ‘Today’s verdict demonstrates that such conduct has consequences that are potentially life-changing. I now wish to move on.
‘With this in mind I wish Mrs Scottow all the best for the future and hope that she will learn from this experience.’
Trumpeting her Gender Recognition Certificate, Ms Hayden (pictured) told the court how Ms Scottow was bound by law to refer to her as a woman. She argued that the defendant was guilty of ‘harassment’ and had ‘misgendered’ her just ‘to annoy people like me’
Scottow’s supporters gathered outside St Albans Magistrates’ Court to protest the verdict, chanting ‘pig in a wig’ and ‘he’s a man – go on prosecute me’
This comes as a High Court judge today ruled that a former officer’s tweets were lawful, and police had breached his right to free expression by behaving like ‘the Stasi’ when they turned up at his work to brand his tweeting a ‘hate incident’.
Harry Miller, 54, had been told by police at work that the 30 ‘transphobic’ messages he had tweeted or retweeted were being recorded as a ‘hate incident’.
But the judge ruled that his tweets were ‘lawful’, slamming police for acting like the Stasi, and warned: ‘We have never lived in an Orwellian society.’
Whereas Mr Miller celebrated on the steps of the High Court today, Ms Scottow was found guilty of sending offensive tweets.
Her supporters today gathered outside St Albans Magistrates’ Court to protest the verdict, chanting ‘pig in a wig’ and ‘he’s a man – go on prosecute me’.
Holding banners which read ‘we love free speech’, the mob tied scarves in the Suffragettes’ purple, green, and white to lampposts outside the courthouse.
Ms Hayden argued the defendant was guilty of ‘harassment’ and had ‘misgendered’ her ‘to annoy people like me’, adding: ‘It’s calculated to violate my dignity as a woman.’
Trumpeting her Gender Recognition Certificate, the complainant told the court how Ms Scottow was bound by law to refer to her as a woman.
Ms Scottow was handed a two-year conditional discharge, and was ordered by the court to pay £1,000 compensation within six months.
The judge said: ‘Stephanie Hayden described to the court the vicious comments. Article 10 accepts freedom of expression however I do not find your comments to be part of that debate.
‘I take the view it was unkind and abusive. I find you were well aware of what you were doing. You do not deny the comments. You started the tweets, you could have stopped them. Little on the internet remains a secret. You caused needless annoyance and anxiety.
‘You said in your evidence that you knew it would get to Stephanie.
‘It was not just the content but also the choice of one of the usernames was to deliberately annoy her.’
She added: ‘You felt able to make personal and offensive comments about her. It was abuse for the sake of it.
‘Your comments contributed nothing to a debate. We teach children to be kind to each other and not to call each other names in the playground.’
Ms Hayden was not in court today to hear the judge’s verdict.
Giving evidence, Ms Hayden had complained that Ms Scottow was an Internet troll who had set up multiple Twitter accounts to ‘abuse’ her.
Despite organising for a ‘compromise’ agreement’ following aspersions that were cast by Ms Scottow of Ms Hayden being ‘racist’, the ‘abuse’ persisted.
When she discovered that a second Twitter account had been set up, from which the mother-of-two ‘misgendered’ the ‘pig in a wig’, Ms Hayden reported the incident to police.
An arrest was made at Ms Scottow’s home, where the suspect was then taken to Hatfield Police Station for questioning seven hours later.
The court heard how Ms Scottow, in her police interview, admitted to being ‘immature’ to Ms Hayden, and knew that her tweets would ‘get to Stephanie’.
She added: ‘I think it was not a nice thing to do but it is something I did. I think it is because I felt I was harassed, I was feeling I was bullied.
‘I reacted in an immature and petty way.’
Ms Scottow’s defence, Ms Wilson, had previously told the court how the transgender woman had been before criminal courts on 11 occasions for 21 offences, and had spent six months in prison for obtaining property deception.
Her points were dismissed by Ms Hayden as ‘tittle tattle brought up to smear me’.
The complainant had also faced questions over whether tweets that she had sent a black person, which have been since deleted, were ‘racist’. She denied any wrongdoing, objected to the use of the term outright, and instead claimed that she was being harassed by a person ‘purporting to be black’.
Today, Ms Wilson made an abuse of process argument, claiming police had launched a one-sided investigation relying on Ms Hayden’s testimony.
After the verdict, she told the court: ‘She has ongoing anxiety. This lady is profoundly affected. She did not believe she was committing an offence.
‘She has come off Twitter and is not engaging in these matter.’
It is understood that Ms Scottow is considering an appeal.
This case is the latest in a series of rulings by British judges on transgender issues.
Last December, an employment judge ruled that the Centre for Global Development (CGD) think-tank was right to sack visiting fellow Maya Forstater for expressing ‘gender-critical comments’ that were ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society’.
Ms Forstater’s contract with the institute had been discontinued after she was accused of using ‘offensive and exclusionary’ anti-trans language on Twitter.
Opposing Government proposals to make an amendment to the Gender Recognition Act that would allow transgender people to self-assign their own gender, Ms Forstater claimed that sex, unlike gender, was a ‘biological fact, and is immutable’.
Taking the CGD to tribunal, though, Judge James Taylor ruled that her own view did not ‘have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief’.
The judge declared that Ms Forstater’s ‘absolutist’ view was ‘incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others’ in his 26-page summary.
He concluded: ‘The Claimant [Ms Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
‘The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.’