The treatments taxpayers may be on the hook for include facial feminization surgery, tracheal shaving, breast augmentation, and electrolysis.
Joseph Daniel Neilson, a biological male who now goes by “Nova June Gaia,” 38, was imprisoned for sexually abusing a young girl.
Neilson was arrested in Portland in 2018 for sexually assaulting the young child he was babysitting. Reduxx, who first reported on the case, has withheld the child’s relationship with the predator to protect their identity and dignity.
“On September 3, 2018, Gaia was watching over two children, a girl and a boy, at a home in Clackamas County. According to the police report obtained by Reduxx, while taking the girl to the bathroom, Gaia licked the girl’s genitals. Later on that same day, Gaia fondled the girl’s vagina,” the outlet reported.
“The girl would eventually disclose the abuse and Gaia was visited by police less than two weeks later. During questioning, Gaia asserted that he had accidentally molested the child while playing with her. Bizarrely, Gaia claimed that the girl’s pants and underwear had fallen off while they were play-fighting, and that he had inadvertently touched his fingers and mouth to her genitals repeatedly.”
At the time of his arrest, Neilson had a full beard and did not appear to be attempting to look like a woman in any way.
However, in June 2019, while awaiting sentencing, Neilson suddenly decided he was “transgender” and submitted an inquiry to his jail asking when he would be transferred to Coffee Creek, the only women’s prison in Oregon.
The predator was convicted of six counts related to the molestation, including one count of felony sodomy and one count of Sexual Abuse in the First Degree.
Neilson was sentenced to 24 years in prison, with his earliest possible release date being 2043.
“Reduxx obtained a 555-page inmate record associated with Gaia’s incarceration history which showed that the first and only time he mentioned his gender identity to prison officials was in October of 2019. Gaia filed an inmate grievance against a Deputy alleging he had ‘exposed to the entire [prison] block’ the style of feminine underwear Gaia had been wearing,” the Reduxx report states.
The pedophile claimed that the deputy had “severely endangered” him and “discriminated against my gender identity” by revealing that he had requested women’s underwear.
“The Deputy loudly informed the entire block that, first, someone was wearing female underwear then, second, that I was the one who had requested them. This very much endangered me and created bias,” the pedophile wrote in a complaint.
The prison ruled that his complaint was “unsustained” and took no action.
In 2021, Neilson changed his name and gender marker to female.
Last year, he submitted a writ of habeas corpus claiming he was being denied “gender-affirming care” while imprisoned.
In May of this year, Senior Judge Cheryl Pellegrini found that the Department of Corrections was in violation of the Oregon Constitution that prohibits prisoners from being treated with “unnecessary rigor.”
Reduxx reports, “The Department of Corrections must now arrange for a variety of tax-payer subsidized treatments for Gaia, including facial feminization surgery, tracheal shaving, breast augmentation, and electrolysis, and transfer Gaia if the procedures can’t be carried out in his current county of incarceration.”
Neilson is still housed in a male prison, which may change due to Pellegrini’s ruling.