Why are we affirming the delusions of a nappy fetishist?

Newcastle’s Chronicle Live reports that a ‘woman’ has admitted in court to dumping soiled adult nappies outside several nurseries in South Tyneside. It probably won’t shock you to learn that the ‘woman’ in question is, in fact, a man.

‘Abbi Taylor’, previously known as Martin Tarling, appeared in Newcastle Crown Court this week to plead guilty to three counts of dumping toxic materials outside nurseries in the Newcastle area. He also admitted to breaching a criminal-behaviour order that banned him from being near nurseries without a reasonable excuse.

Since 2019, Taylor has been leaving nappies filled with human waste at the sites of three nurseries. He has also smeared excrement over milk bottles and on the fire escape of one of the buildings. He was also caught climbing inside clinical waste bins to sleep. Staff at a nursery in Jarrow said they found up to 50 soiled nappies left on their site.

Taylor and his grim antics first made headlines last year, when he appeared in court to plead not guilty to various nappy-related charges. Incredibly, much of the coverage around his crimes referred to him as a woman, using his preferred she / her pronouns. The picture of Taylor that accompanied each article – showing a seedy-looking fella with greasy pink hair and five o’clock shadow – made this all the more jarring.

It’s not just media outlets that have indulged Taylor’s delusions, either. Even the courts felt the need to refer to him as a woman. His lawyer, Nick Lane, actually tried to argue that Taylor’s trans identity made him too vulnerable to be sent to prison.

Much of the case for the defence focussed on Taylor’s supposed vulnerability. Apparently, it was because of his troubled childhood that he couldn’t help but hang around all those nurseries, carrying bags of shit. The court was assured that he was not sexually attracted to children. Rather, he simply had a fetish for wearing nappies (indeed, on his Facebook profile, he describes himself as an ‘adult baby diaper lover’). He supposedly only climbed into clinical waste bins ‘in order to gain comfort’ and was in search of a ‘simpler, more care-free time’, Lane claimed. This is probably not much comfort to the parents whose children attended the targeted nurseries or to those who were expected to clean up after him.

Everyone who has seen Taylor’s photograph knows he is a man. Indeed, you could probably have guessed he is bloke from the lurid details of his crimes (bizarre sexual offences such as this are overwhelmingly committed by men). Yet it seems that in court, and in polite society more broadly, we are expected to affirm his delusion that he is a woman. Even when it comes to flashers, paedophiles and rapists, the feelings of male sex criminals seem to count for more than the observance of truth these days.

When men like Taylor can terrorise nurseries as part of a deranged fetish and the state still insists on pandering to his delusions, something has gone terribly wrong. This is something we really ought to make a stink about.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.