Trans Adult Sentenced to Juvenile Facility for Sexual Assaulting Minor
The Los Angeles Times reports. The case has put a spotlight on Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s position of refusing to transfer juvenile defendants to adult court.Gascón has said that the brains of juveniles aren’t developed enough and a better place for those who do crimes underage is in a juvenile treatment facility.Tubbs was only arrested for sexual assault in 2021.
It wasn’t until a DNA match linked Tubbs to the assault, according to local station KABC.Between the assault in 2014 and her arrest, Tubbs had been arrested several times including for battery, drug possession, and probation violations in Idaho and Washington, and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in Kern County, officials told the Times.While Tubbs was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor, she wasn’t prosecuted for it.
In November, she confessed to the assault. Police said that assault only stopped when someone came into the restroom.The prosecutors in the case never sought to transfer her case to adult court, where she would have been facing a longer sentence to have been served in adult jail.“I want to be clear,” Superior Court Judge Mario Barrera said at a hearing Thursday in a Lancaster courtroom, the Times reports. “The filing of a transfer motion is entirely within the discretion of the district attorney.”Gascón previously told the paper that the victim did not want to testify.
The victim, the paper reports, has moved away and is still in therapy.The district attorney also voiced concern over Tubbs being in a jail for adults because she is trans.
