Gwen Araujo

By Dina Mazina and Rebecca DiBrienza

Although less publicized than the murder of Brandon Teena in 1994, the 2002 death of transgender woman Gwen Araujo is a violent hate crime that “underscore[s] just how much transgendered kids are at risk for violence”, according to Jim Weston of the Billy DeFrank Gay and Lesbian Center in San Jose, California. Araujo (whose legal first name was Eddie) went to a party in Newark, California on October 3rd, 2002 and never came home. Two weeks later, her body was found in a shallow grave 100 miles away. According to police, she had been beaten and strangled by men who had learned, after engaging in sexual activity with her, that she was biologically male.

The two men accused of her murder were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. They offered a “transgender panic” defense, claiming that they killed the victim because they were so shocked to see that she was biologically male. The prosecution pushed for a “hate-crime enhancement”, which would have increased the severity of the sentence, but the jury was not receptive to it, so it was dropped. There was a third man involved, but the jury remained deadlocked on his sentence, and a fourth man, who agreed to testify against the first three in exchange for a lessened sentence: 11 years for voluntary manslaughter. The trial made activists “grimly aware of how difficult it is to obtain a first-degree conviction when the victim is transgender”.

Araujo’s mother, Sylvia Guerrero, chose to bury her child in women’s clothes and to have the tombstone bear the name Gwen, explaining “He was born this way. He always felt like a girl.” What made the Araujo case particularly noteworthy, according to Greg Hernandez in The Advocate, is the activism undertaken by her family members, who openly discussed the murder and spoke of “their deep love for Gwen and their determination to obtain justice.”

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