Click to expand Image The transgender pride flag. © Wikimedia Commons

A Russian court has sentenced a 53-year-old trans woman to three years in prison, on bogus “distribution of pornography depicting minors” charges for sharing nude anime drawings on social media.

The case began in the summer of 2018, when Michelle was informed she was under criminal investigation for posts of “hentai” – sexually charged drawings featuring naked characters from Japanese cartoons – in 2013 and 2014.

Prior to the trial, which took place in November, the investigators ordered an “expert” evaluation of the images from the Center for Socio-Cultural Expertise, an organization known to provide damning conclusions in politically motivated criminal cases, including the case of Pussy Riot, the child pornography case against human rights defender Yury Dmitriev, and dozens of extremism cases against Russia’s Jehova’s Witnesses. Their evaluation of the drawings concluded that they included characters younger than 14 years of age. Authorities took Michelle into custody from the courtroom, immediately after the judge handed down the verdict. She remains in a solitary cell in jail pending an appeal hearing in her case.

Michelle, a survivor of bladder cancer who worked as an epidemiologist at a local clinic before she was fired because of the criminal case, has been on hormone therapy for transitioning for about two years. But she is legally recognized as male. She will therefore be forced to serve her sentence in a men’s penal colony. Such a blatant disregard for her gender identity leaves Michelle extremely vulnerable to abuse by both male detainees and guards.

Moreover, Maria Chaschilova, a lawyer at the Moscow LGBT Community Center, who was in contact with Michelle before her trial, says Michelle does not have access to hormone therapy in prison and will not have it in penal colony. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health warns that for trans people in detention the “consequences of abrupt withdrawal of hormones … include a high likelihood of negative outcomes such as surgical self-treatment by autocastration, depressed mood, dysphoria, and/or suicidality.”

Michelle is appealing her conviction and sentence, but so long as this case persists Michelle’s rights to health, identity, expression, liberty, and even to life hang in the balance.