Transgender woman handcuffed, locked up for trying to enter women's toilet in shopping mall, livestreams ordeal
A transgender woman was stopped from using the woman’s restroom in a shopping mall in the Quezon City area of Manila, the Philippines, by a janitor who proceeded to keep her detained till the police arrived.
On Tuesday, August 13, when Gretchen Custodio Diez, 28, was about to enter the women’s washroom when, Chair Ganal, a female cleaner at the mall, blocked her way and refused to let her enter.
The janitor then told her, “You still have a penis, remember that,” as a reason for doing what she did, Daily Mail reported.
The cleaner then took Diez down to the basement where she was held inside a room where she could not contact anyone.
At one point during her ordeal, Diez started live-streaming the incident on Facebook Live.
In the video, the janitor could be seen frequently trying to take Diez’ cell phone away from her and also seemed to hit her in the process.
When the police arrived at the scene, they put handcuffs on Diez “like a shoplifter” before marching her to the police station.
The authorities also seemed confused about the best way to deal with the situation as they had never faced such a case.
Diez was first taken to the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Station then to the QCPD's Anti-Cybercrime Division.
Although the shopping mall initially filed a complaint against Diez, they later dropped it.
Diez also received an apology letter from the janitor, who admitted she had “made a mistake.”
“I am only human. It was not my intention to offend her. I am willing to study the rights of the LGBT (community). That is all. I am sorry,” she said in the letter.
Criticizing the shopping mall, Joy Belmonte, the Mayor of Quezon City, said that the city would work to protect the rights of the LGBT community.
Other politicians also weighed in:
Diez said in a statement: “For me, it was like I was a shoplifter being dragged inside the mall, with people looking at me as I was being held. I could not understand how, in a supposedly gender-fair city, there is a person who would treat me like I committed (a) crime.”