Would-be kidnapper who arrived at court as a 'woman' is jailed as judge sees through trans bid and brands him a dangerous MAN

At Winchester Crown Court yesterday morning I watched as defence counsel asked the court to look at the person in the dock – and see a vulnerable ‘young lady’.

The defendant had recently adopted the name ‘Safiya Anna Haverty’: formerly Sean Haverty, a biological male who now ‘identifies as a woman’.

And, indeed, to complete the look, ‘Safiya’ was sporting a long black wig and wearing a women’s trouser suit.

Listening to all this, you could almost have forgotten the reason we were all there.

For Haverty, 28, had been convicted of one of the most chilling examples of male violence against a woman I have encountered in decades of campaigning: a calculated attack on a stranger in her 50s which could easily have ended in murder.

Yet here, as Haverty awaited sentencing, the defence was inviting the court to consider the vulnerability of the perpetrator. 

Fortunately, Judge Rufus Taylor was having none of it. ‘You are a very dangerous man and you’re a danger to women unknown to you,’ he told Haverty, imposing a ten-year sentence with a further four years on extended licence.

The judge’s language was a welcome moment of clarity in a debate that, especially in recent years, has seen the facts of biological sex obscured or wilfully ignored by activists.

The defendant had recently adopted the name ‘Safiya Anna Haverty’: formerly Sean Haverty, a biological male who now ‘identifies as a woman’

That such frank speech should feel so unusual today – however welcome it might be – tells us how far down the rabbit hole we have travelled.

Consider what happened on March 2 this year. Haverty’s victim, whom the Daily Mail is not naming, was walking alone in Andover, Hampshire, when a white van struck her from behind, throwing her several feet forward. 

Haverty, who then had a beard, emerged from the vehicle, seized her and began dragging her towards the back of the vehicle before strangling her.

The victim’s extraordinary presence of mind almost certainly saved her life. Realising she could not overpower her attacker, she went limp, ‘playing dead’, allowing him to believe she was incapacitated enough to release his grip and open the van’s rear doors, intending to bundle her into the vehicle.

Summoning all her strength, she then fled, scrambling up a grassy bank and alerting two passing cyclists. Her first words? ‘A man just tried to kill me.’

It later emerged that Haverty – who attempted to chase down his victim in his van after she escaped – had been driving around for days, apparently searching for a woman to kidnap. 

Afterwards, the father-of-one fled to Cornwall, where his then-partner lived, shaved off his hair and beard and began sporting a long dark wig. 

He explained to his partner that he had begun a ‘gender transition’, although this new life conveniently served to disguise Haverty’s appearance, given that police were looking for the driver of the white van.

Either way, CCTV footage capturing Haverty’s number plate led to an arrest, and in August, following a six-day trial, ‘Safiya’ was convicted of kidnap, intentional strangulation, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and perverting the course of justice.

Haverty had already admitted dangerous driving. 

Yesterday his victim told the court: ‘I still think about how serious the consequences could have been and how easily things could have ended very differently.

'The fact that someone was prepared to do that to me has left me with a fear that I never had before.’

I have heard countless women describe the aftermath of male violence. Rarely have I heard its enduring psychological impact expressed more poignantly.

Yet the defence sought to paint Haverty as the vulnerable party. At one point – unlike the judge’s clear language – Haverty’s lawyers even appeared to lose track of the pronouns used to refer to ‘Safiya’, stumbling between ‘she’, ‘he’ and ‘they’ in a single sentence.

Of course, in a fair system, defendants must be entitled to put forward evidence of mental health difficulties, personal circumstances and other supposed mitigating factors. 

But the courts must be awake to the risk of violent male offenders hijacking the language of female vulnerability to eclipse their victims’ suffering. 

Who could forget the controversy surrounding Isla Bryson, formerly Adam Graham, convicted in Scotland in 2023 of raping two women? Bryson – who liked to wear a blonde wig and leggings that perhaps deliberately showed the outline of his genitalia in public – was first sent to the women’s prison at Cornton Vale and only moved to a male prison following a public outcry.

Yesterday’s sentencing shows there is now evidence that lessons have been learned from such cases.

But I remain appalled that the defence could have presented this perpetrator as a ‘young lady’ while the actual woman whose life he terrorised described the fear she will carry for years.