New German Priority: Trans Ideology First, Justice Second

His "status as a black transgender person allowed authorities to view him not as the dangerous criminal he was, but as a victim of racism and transphobia."

From The European Conservative

By Sabine Beppler-Spahl

The incident of a failed asylum seeker identifying as transgender exposes the dangerous absurdity of Germany's self-identification law and its broken asylum system.

A headline in Germany’s left-liberal Spiegel magazine couldn’t be more misleading: “Woman stabs man in a refugee shelter—more than twelve years’ prison sentence.” The “woman” in this case is actually a man. This bizarre and tragic incident involving a South African failed asylum seeker who identifies as transgender exposes the dangerous absurdity of Germany’s self-identification law and its broken asylum system.

The Potsdam District Court sentenced 38-year-old Hilton J. to 12 years and 8 months for manslaughter this April. The perpetrator arrived at hearings in women’s clothing, headscarf, and heavily painted lips. The victim? A 33-year-old Syrian refugee who came to Germany in 2015 and worked as security at a shelter housing primarily Ukrainian women.

Germany’s knife crime epidemic continues unabated—over 29,000 incidents in 2024 alone, with nearly 10,000 causing grievous bodily harm. The depressingly familiar pattern repeats: perpetrators who should have been deported long ago remain to commit violent crimes. (The Solingen attacker who stabbed three people last summer, the Aschaffenburg perpetrator who killed a child in January, and the man who killed another man in the Berlin underground this April —all were supposed to have been deported from the country.)

But this case stands out for exposing how identity politics creates dangerous blind spots in the system. Hilton J.’s status as a black transgender person allowed authorities to view him not as the dangerous criminal he was, but as a victim of racism and transphobia. This misguided perspective enabled his placement in women’s shelters despite his extensive history of violence.

Court testimony revealed that Hilton J. had terrorized multiple shelters—threatening women, spitting at them, and even injuring a Ukrainian woman with a knife before the fatal attack. Yet the system kept accommodating him. The Syrian security guard, who took his duty to protect women seriously, paid with his life after multiple targeted stabs to the chest. Authorities clearly prioritized trans ideology over the safety of vulnerable women and staff.

Transgender identity has captured Germany’s elite institutions. The country’s radical self-identification law, implemented last year, allows anyone 14 and older to change their legal gender by mere declaration—and threatens those who ‘misgender’ them with €10,000 fines. Although this law wasn’t yet in effect when Hilton J. was arrested, the underlying ideology had already permeated law enforcement. Most tellingly, authorities initially placed Hilton J. in a women’s prison after his arrest—a shocking decision that demonstrates how deeply transgender ideology had already taken hold within the system, even before the self-identification law formalized these practices.

Unsurprisingly, Hilton J continued to torment female prisoners while in custody. The court heard testimony from a female prisoner who said he had threatened her by saying “You’re not going to get out of here alive, I’m going to beat you to death.” He also bullied inmates’ children and sexually exposed himself.

Yet activist groups still campaign for “Justice for Cleo” (the perpetrator’s preferred name), claiming: “Cleo is a black transmigrant. She has been in prison for 10 months—without evidence. Because she is black. Because she is a trans woman. Because she is a migrant.”

More concerning is the German media’s continued promotion of transgender ideology. Outlets like Spiegel and Berliner Zeitung and others persistently refer to the perpetrator as a woman named “Cleopatra”—a courtesy unlikely extended to a non-transgender killer of a Syrian refugee.

The Potsdam court thankfully delivered a commonsense ruling, declaring that Hilton J. belongs in a men’s prison “and that’s where he’ll remain.” Yet it’s tragic that it took a killing for basic common sense to reassert itself.

Among the many broken promises of the conservative CDU following February’s narrow election victory is their failure to abolish the self-identification law. The new CDU-SPD coalition merely pledges to “evaluate” the law before summer 2026—a cowardly capitulation to the trans lobby that shows Germany remains firmly in the grip of woke ideology. Because of this law, biological men will continue to be placed in women’s prisons and shelters. 

While other European countries have begun to reverse course on transgender policies after numerous incidents compromising women’s and children’s safety, Germany stubbornly clings to an ideology that elevates subjective identity claims over objective biological reality—and ultimately, over public safety itself.