Mail article - Judges are ordered to allow transgender defendants to be addressed as the gender of their choice during court appearances

How can you give evidence when being forced to lie about the very things you saw with your own eyes

Forcing victims and witnesses to lie under oath doesn't seem like an appropriate way for courts to proceed.

It's not always the case that the photo clears things up. I recall a trans woman reported in the Liverpool Echo who walked free after being found guilty of possessing child and animal sex abuse images. I can't remember the name to link to it. The picture taken wasn't that clear and taken from a side angle, comments underneath 'were all that's an ugly woman' interspersed with 'that's a man!' Clearly some people genuinely thought it was a woman. Most people wouldn't know about the journalistic code with respect to reporting and pronoun use and just assume it is in fact a woman, unless it's blatantly obvious as in Karen White or Jacinta.

I think it will have the effect of lobby groups being able to monitor trans crime even harder.

I think its downright cruel.

Its abuse of the victims of whatever crime is permitted

How can you give evidence when being forced to lie about the very things you saw with your own eyes

People would rather not bother going to court than to be mentally abused like that.

The rules, published in a new edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, say courts should not reveal a defendant’s birth gender and that in ‘rare’ cases where disclosing a previous sex is necessary, judges should take the court into secret session or impose reporting restrictions.

Are there any other aspects of a defendant's identity which courts are not allowed to reveal?

This is going to backfire. Juries aren’t morons and they are going to wonder, if the defendant is lying about their sex, what else are they lying about?

But they don't take into account that frequently a photo is all that's needed.