NSW police confirmed a man has been charged following the death of 25-year-old Mhelody Polan Bruno

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A man has been charged with manslaughter after the death of a Filipina woman on Saturday night in the regional New South Wales town of Wagga Wagga.

Mhelody Polan Bruno, a 25-year-old transgender woman, had been in Australia for two months, and was due to return home at the end of this week, according to reports in Rappler.

NSW police confirmed a man has been charged following Bruno’s death.

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Ambulance officers were called to a unit on Tarcutta Street about 8am on Saturday. Paramedics stabilised her at the scene, but she died the next morning at Wagga Wagga Base Hospital.

Riverina district police have established a taskforce – Strike Force Lamson – to investigate Bruno’s death.

A 31-year-old Wagga Wagga man was arrested on Sunday afternoon. He was charged with manslaughter and bailed to appear in Wagga Wagga local court on 6 November.

Bruno’s brother, Leonel Bruno, told Rappler by phone his family was pleading with the Philippines authorities to assist with repatriating his sister’s body.

“Our call is for the government to help bring our sister home. I hope they can help us. There is no one handling our case. We were already expecting her to come home, but this happened.”

Transgender people suffer grossly disproportionate levels of interpersonal violence, and are regularly subjected to hate crimes, media representative for Transgender Victoria, Sally Goldner, told the Guardian.

“The statistics that have come out repeatedly show that transgender and gender diverse people experience physical assault or threat of physical assault at a rate of 25%. That’s compared to 2% for the general population, so 12 times the rate. When it comes to people who don’t fit expectations of how someone is supposed to look in relation to gender, it gets even worse, up to 50%.”

Goldner said that the continued disproportionate level of transgender violence was driven by “the fact there are still too many people who think it’s OK to ridicule, vilify, and incite hatred against transgender and gender diverse people”.

“Violence doesn’t come out of nowhere, it comes out of these discriminatory attitudes.”

And Goldner said statistics, particularly those emerging out of the US, show transgender people of colour face additional discrimination and even higher levels of violence.

“Some people face, if you like, double discrimination, even triple discrimination, simply because of who they are. We must treat all people with respect.”

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Eighteen transgender people have been killed in the US this year, according to the the Human Rights Campaign. The American Medical Association has described an “epidemic” of violence against transgender people.

Leonel Bruno said his family had been given little information about the case, or the cause of his sister’s death.

Bruno worked in a call centre in Makati City and was a breadwinner for her family, her brother said.

“We hope she is given justice.”