Prominent Trans Twitter Engineer Charged With Raping Her Wife

One of the world's most influential LGBT minds in tech faces a series of felony charges after being accused of rape.

Well-known trans woman Dana McCallum has been charged with five felonies. McCallum, an advocate for transgender and women's rights who works as a senior engineer at Twitter, was charged with three counts of spousal rape, one count of domestic violence, and one count of false imprisonment, the San Francisco Examiner revealed last week.

The charges stem from an incident January 26, just one day after McCallum reportedly served her wife with divorce papers. The couple had been separated for about a year but reportedly maintained a friendly and sometimes physical relationship.

Erin Canton, a friend of the victim, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the victim told her McCallum showed up intoxicated at her estranged wife's two-bedroom home in San Francisco's Mission Districtthe morning of January 26. One of McCallum's three teenage children let her in. McCallum's wife escorted the inebriated McCallum into a separate room away from the teenagers. This, according to Canton, is where McCallum allegedly attacked her wife.

John Runfola, McCallum's attorney, claims the accusations are merely a ploy by the wife to extort his client.

"This is just all about destroying a person publicly and trying to grab hundreds of thousands of dollars, or perhaps more, all by making these false accusations," Runfola told the Chronicle.

According to Runfola, McCallum was on the verge of massive financial gain in the form of Twitter stock options.

Last year Business Insider put McCallum at number 5 on its list of the 31 most important LGBT people in tech.

McCallum remains free on $350,000 bail as she awaits her next court appearance, a pretrial conference Thursday.