17-month-old Roy Jones brutally murdered for acting like a girl
Strong trigger warning for graphic description of abuse and murder.
17-month-old infant assigned male at birth, Roy Antonio Jones III, was killed by his mother’s boyfriend for acting too much like a girl.
Pedro Jones was babysitting Roy Jones (no biological relation) at the Shinecock Indian Reservation. When the less-than-two-year-old baby failed to fulfill his caretaker’s idea of what a less-than-two-year-old boy should act like, Pedro Jones began beating the infant with closed fists all over his body and then choking him. The child went into cardiac arrest, and later died at the hospital.
Pedro Jones has pled not guilty. He also admitted to abusing his victim in the past:
“I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl…I never struck that kid that hard before. A one-time mistake and I am going to do 20 years…A tribe spokeswoman said the whole tribe is in mourning, but the child’s grandfather said, “He infiltrated my family through our trust, through the heart of my daughter and then stole the life of her child. I hope the justice system turns around and steals his.”
All human beings are expected to meet certain gender requirements based on their sex assignment at birth – from presentation to personality, expectations based on genitalia are cruelly enforced. Though everyone’s gender presentation and performance is policed and punished, these standards are applied with particular stringency and violence to trans folks.
