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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (March 2007) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. The Murder of Gwen Araujo, an American teenage transwoman, was a murder case in Newark, California, in October 2002.[1] Araujo was killed by four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering she was transsexual.[2][3][4] Two of the defendants were convicted of second-degree murder[5], but not convicted on the requested hate crime enhancements. The other two defendants pleaded guilty or no contest to voluntary manslaughter. In at least one of the trials, a trans panic defense - an extension of the gay panic defense - was employed.[6][5] The crime received widespread national and international attention and prompted some authors to write about the bearing of homophobia and transphobia on Araujo's murder, along with questioning whether transgender people were being represented fairly and accurately in both mass media and the criminal justice system.[7][6][8] Reaction to the case was an impetus for law reform movements in several states.[9][10] The events, including both criminal trials, have been portrayed in a TV movie, A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story.[2][4] The murder was regularly compared to the Matthew Shephard case and was a rallying cause for the transgender and ultimately Witness account of the circumstances of her death Araujo, who was going by the name "Lida" at the time,[13][14] met Michael Magidson, Jose Merel, Jaron Nabors, and Jason Cazares in the summer of 2002.[15] She was reported to have engaged in oral sex with Magidson and anal sex with Merel.[16] She claimed to be menstruating and during sex would push her partners' hands away from her genitalia to prevent them from discovering that she was physically male.[17] On 3 October 2002, she attended a party at a house rented by Merel and his brother, Paul Merel.[18][19] Also in attendance at the party were Magidson, Jose Merel, Nabors, Cazares, Paul Merel, Paul Merel's girlfriend Nicole Brown, and Emmanual Merel. At the party on 3 October 2002 it was discovered, by forced inspection (conducted by Brown[20]), that Araujo had male genitalia, following which the men with whom she had had sexual relations became extremely agitated. Magidson put her in a chokehold.[21] Later, he punched her in the face and began to choke her, but was pulled off by others.[20] At some point after that, Paul Merel, Emmanuel Merel, and Brown left the apartment.[22][21] Jose Merel struck Araujo in | ||||
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