The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which claims to fight for the rights of Americans, is condemning the state of Florida for failing to provide “gender-affirming care” to a child rapist and murderer prior to his execution.
Duane Owen was executed by legal injection on Thursday, June 15, after being handed a death sentence for the brutal slayings of a teen girl and a single mother of two in 1984. Owen raped and murdered 14-year-old Karen Slattery and 38-year-old Georgianna Worden in a span of just two months in Palm Beach County, Florida.
During interrogation, Owen claimed he raped women in order to “harvest” their hormones to help “turn himself into a female.” Despite never publicly identifying as transgender, the ACLU took to Twitter after Owen’s execution to lament Florida’s refusal to provide him “medically necessary gender-affirming care.”
In their tweet, the ACLU alleged the lack of transgender healthcare caused Owen “enormous suffering” and violated his “right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.” The ACLU used “she/her” pronouns to refer to Owen.
In a follow-up Tweet, the ACLU doubled down on their support of Owen, demanding that the “unfair and cruel death penalty” be put to an end.
Christina Pushaw, the Rapid Response Director for Florida Governor Ron Desantis, responded to the ACLU, clarifying that Duane Owen was both a man and a violent rapist who wanted to be housed in a women’s prison to “be around more potential victims in a captive space.”
According to pro-woman outlet Reduxx, on March 24, 1984, Owen broke into a home where his first victim Karen Slattery was babysitting two young sisters. While the children were asleep, he stabbed the girl 18 times and raped her before and after killing her.
After the parents of the children Slattery was babysitting returned home, they discovered her corpse and called the police. Rich Lincoln, the detective on the case, described the murder as “the worst crime scene he would see in his 37 years as a cop.”
Just two months later, Owen murdered his next victim, Georgianna Worden, a 38-year-old single mother of two. After breaking into her home and killing her using a hammer, he “proceeded to rape her corpse.”
Tragically, one of Worden’s two daughters, who were 9 and 13 at the time, woke the next morning to discover her dead body.
Owen was arrested the next day as a prime suspect and spent over thirty years on death row for his crimes.
According to court documents acquired by Reduxx, Owen’s lawyer attempted to stop his execution by arguing that he was insane and suffering from a delusional disorder. The lawyer claimed that Owen’s “core delusion is the belief that the crimes he committed would turn him into a female.”
After having his mental health properly evaluated, psychiatrists for the state denied claims that he was suffering from mental illnesses, and described Owen as being “sexually sadistic.”
Dr. Emily Lazarou, a board certified general and forensic psychiatrist, evaluated Owen on May 23, 2023, noting that he did not meet a “shred of criteria for schizophrenia” and displayed “no feminine mannerisms and characteristics.” She also noted that Owen had never raised any issue of having gender dysphoria during his many hearings.
Despite her expert evaluation, the court continued to address Owen by his preferred pronouns.
The ACLU’s defense of Owen was met with widespread outrage on social media, many of whom found it reprehensible that an organization dedicated to justice would defend a violent criminal.
This is not the first time the ACLU has been under fire for using their resources to defend or advocate for predatory men.
In 2000, the. ACLU defended a pro-pedophile group which advocated for the “right” of adult men to have sexual relationships with young boys from claims their propaganda had led to the horrific rape and murder of a 10-year-old boy.
A lawsuit brought by the parents of Jeffrey Curley alleged that the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pederast advocacy organization, incited his death through its disturbing promotion of child-adult relations.
As reported by Wired, pedophiles Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari were “sexually obsessed” with Curley and lured him from his neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the boy resisted their sexual advances, the adult men smothered him, stuffed him into a concrete-filled container, and dumped it into a Maine river.
“The ACLU defended NAMBLA, claiming the case ” involves issues of freedom of speech and association.”
On August 24, 2000, the jury awarded Curley’s parents $328 million from his killers. Knowing they would never see a dime of the money, the Curley’s lawyer described the winnings as having a symbolic value. But the Curley’s case against NAMBLA was ultimately dropped thanks to the intervention of the ACLU.
