BREAKING
An anti-trans activist told the internet a trans soccer player hospitalized two cis women. In court, she admitted she had no proof, no names, no date, and no idea where it supposedly happened.
The activist is Kirralie Smith, CEO of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Binary Australia. Back in 2023 she posted photos of Riley Dennis, a trans woman playing semi-pro soccer in New South Wales, and called her "a man appropriating womanhood" who had put two cis women in the hospital during a match. On the stand, Smith couldn't say when it happened, where it happened, or who the injured women even were. "I didn't injure anyone. I didn't hospitalize anyone," Dennis said.
Then it got stranger. Smith posted on X that she wanted men to help her deal with "the bloke playing on the women's team." She traveled to the coast with a group of men impersonating trans women, filmed them playing soccer, and used the footage to mock trans players.
Men started showing up to Dennis's actual games and filming her. "All of a sudden I just felt like there were a thousand eyes on me," she said. She couldn't get a spot in her league the next season, and she believes the attention Smith created is why.
A judge called Smith's behavior "objectively threatening" and "disturbing." A court then found her guilty of unlawful vilification, the first time anyone has been found to have unlawfully vilified a person for being trans under NSW law. It rejected her claim that this was just political speech.
On July 24, the NSW Supreme Court threw out her appeal. Smith and Binary now owe $95,000 in damages to Dennis and a second targeted player, Stephanie Blanch, within 28 days. They also have to publish a court-approved apology and keep it pinned on their social channels for three months.
"It didn't pass," Dennis said.
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