coochiequeens

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Prosecutors appeal sentence of man who killed two women in 24 hours. They women weren't "migrant sex workers" they were exploited women who might have been trafficked.

two women in 24 hours

By Pat McGrath

By Kirsten Robb

ABC Investigations

Topic:Law, Crime and Justice

In short:

The Director of Public Prosecutions has filed an appeal against the sentence given to Xiaozheng Lin last year after he admitted to the manslaughter of two Melbourne women in their own homes within 24 hours.

Anti-gendered violence campaigners had argued the 14-year-sentence showed the justice system did not value the lives of migrant sex workers as highly as others.

Prosecutors says the women's profession was not a factor in its decision to cut a plea deal with Lin last year, which saw his charges downgraded from murder to manslaughter.

When it was revealed last year that a man who killed and robbed two women in a 24-hour period in Melbourne in 2022 could be released within seven years, the sentence triggered outrage from sex workers and anti-gendered violence campaigners who argued it was far too lenient.

They argued it sent a message the justice system didn't value the lives of migrant sex workers as highly as other victims of crime.

Xiaozheng Lin's victims, 31-year-old Yuqi Luo and 51-year-old Hyun Sook Jeon, were both sex workers who were seeing Lin as a client when he killed them and stole their money and possessions to help pay off his gambling debts.

Now, the prosecutors who cut a plea deal with Lin, which saw his charges downgraded from murder to manslaughter, also want him to spend more time in prison.

The Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has filed an appeal against the 14-year prison sentence Lin received after pleading guilty to manslaughter over the deaths of Ms Luo and Ms Jeon in their homes on December 27 and 28, 2022.

The sentence handed down by Victorian Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye in November included a non-parole period of nine years, meaning that with time served in pre-trial detention, Lin could be released in late 2031.

In documents filed in court, the DPP, Brendan Kissane KC, argues the sentence is "manifestly inadequate".

Prosecutors also argue Justice Kaye was wrong in finding that Lin's prospects of rehabilitation were "reasonable".

In his sentencing remarks, the judge said he could "only assess [Lin's] prospect of rehabilitation as being reasonable" because even though he had accepted responsibility for killing Ms Luo and Ms Jeon, he had not expressed any remorse.

The DPP filed the appeal in December but only acknowledged the proceedings following inquiries from ABC Investigations.

The ABC understands Lin's legal team has filed submissions in response to the appeal, but they declined to comment when contacted by the ABC.

Victorian sex worker advocacy group Vixen welcomed the DPP's decision to appeal Lin's sentence.

"Describing the original sentence as 'manifestly inadequate' reflects what many in our community already felt — namely, that justice was not served," said Vixen manager, Gia Green.

Ms Green criticised the DPP for last year agreeing to the plea deal with Lin that saw his charges downgraded from murder to manslaughter, saying sex workers wanted the matter heard before a court.

"When two Asian-migrant women are violently killed within 24 hours, and their killer is allowed to plead to manslaughter and thus receive a lesser sentence, it sends a chilling message about whose lives matter in our legal system,"

she said.

"It reinforces the stigma sex workers already face and undermines trust in institutions that are meant to protect us."

Ms Luo was born in China's Hunan Province and migrated to Australia in 2018.

Ms Jeon was born in South Korea and moved to Australia in 2013.

Criminal defence lawyer Rob Stary, who has also served as a magistrate in Victoria, said he shared concerns that migrant sex workers could be treated differently as victims of violent crimes.

"Are they viewed in real terms as lesser victims? They might not have family here. They're often isolated.

"I'm concerned about these things."

The Office of Public Prosecutions (OPP) rejected the suggestion that Ms Luo and Ms Jeon's professions were a factor in its decision to accept the plea deal.

"In all cases involving a death, any offer by an accused person to plead guilty to a lesser offence is considered extremely carefully, taking into account a range of relevant factors including the views of the victim's family," it said in a statement.

"Any loss of human life is tragic. Subjective judgements about 'whose lives matter' are not made."

"The occupation of the victim has no bearing on the decision-making process."

Documents released by the court also reveal new details about Lin and his actions over the two nights in December 2022.

Lin was born in China in 2000 and moved to Australia on a student visa in 2018.

He was 22 years old and working as a labourer on building sites around Melbourne at the time he killed the two women.

In a submission to the court as part of the plea deal, Lin's defence team said he started seeing sex workers shortly after arriving in Australia and started gambling heavily online and at Crown Casino.

By the end of 2022, he had accrued large gambling debts, including to loan sharks.

During the month before he killed Ms Luo and Ms Jeon, Lin gambled more than $38,000 via his TAB online betting account.

By the end of December, his TAB account had a deficit of about $3,600.

Xiaozheng Lin (left) arrives at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne in October last year to plead guilty to manslaughter over the two women's deaths. (AAP: James Ross)

A prosecution summary filed with the court said Lin got a lift from a friend to Yuqi Lou's apartment on La Trobe St in Melbourne late in the evening on December 26, 2022.

During the drive, Lin told the friend that "he had recently lost money at the TAB and was intending to rob a sex worker" to help pay off some of his gambling debts.

According to prosecutors, Lin later admitted in a police interview that he became angry with Ms Luo after the pair had sex because she refused to provide oral sex without additional payment.

Lin told police he grabbed Ms Luo, wrapped his arm around her head and pushed her into her bed, holding her down for about one minute. 

After the attack, she was left gasping for air beside the bed.

An autopsy later found that Ms Luo died from asphyxiation.

Before leaving the apartment, Lin had a shower and then stole about $7,000 in cash (including the money he had paid her), her mobile phone, an electronic tablet and several handbags.

He threw Ms Luo's mobile phone from the car on the drive back to his friend's house in Box Hill.

The friend cooked Lin a meal, then dropped him home at about 3:15am.

Ms Luo's body was discovered by a friend at about 8pm that night.

The same evening, Lin went to the Docklands apartment of Hyun Sook Jeon, who was known as Lisa to her friends and family.

He has refused to tell police what happened during the hour and a half he spent at her apartment, but he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Police found her on December 30. An autopsy was unable to establish the cause of her death.

Before leaving Ms Jeon's apartment, Lin stole her laptop, mobile phone, car keys and credit cards.

Court records show Lin inserted Ms Jeon's SIM card into his phone and over the next few days tried to make about $15,000 worth of online transactions using her credit cards, including at TAB, JB Hi-Fi, Apple and Optus.

He turned himself in on December 29 after police put out a public appeal for information about his whereabouts.

The OPP said it did not keep figures on how regularly it appealed sentences in cases where it had reached a plea deal with an accused.

But its appeal of Lin's sentence is not without precedent.

In 2019, the Court of Appeal increased the sentence of Borce Ristevski from nine years to 13 years for the manslaughter of his wife Karen in 2016.

Ristevski struck a plea deal with prosecutors on the eve of his trial for alleged murder.

The non-parole period for his sentence was increased from six years to 10.

Rob Stary was Ristevski's solicitor in that case, and said he expected it to serve as a precedent in the appeal of Lin's sentence.

"This kind of appeal does happen occasionally, it's not uncommon," Mr Stary said.

"The Appeal Court judges will look at similar cases to see what the sentencing patterns are."

No hearing dates have been set for the appeal of Lin's sentence; however, the OPP said it expected the first hearing to take place in the final three months of this year.

In Victoria, manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

[coochiequeens]

Thank you for filling in the rest @bittermarching

It's one thing to fight against discrimination against LGB adults. It's another thing to fight for life-altering medical treatments for minors.

The ACLU bet big on a trans rights case. Its loss was predictable.

A Supreme Court ruling shows trans advocates failed to see the fragility of the liberal consensus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/21/supreme-court-youth-gender-transition-ban/

opinion by Megan McArdle June 21, 2025

Trans rights advocates, as well as opponents of gender-affirming care for minors, demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

It was clear from oral arguments that the ACLU was going to lose U.S. v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender transition treatments for minors. But really, it was clear long before that.

The plaintiffs were facing six conservative justices who needed to be convinced that such treatments are so compelling — as the litany goes, “lifesaving, evidence-based and medically necessary” — that states could have no good reason to ban them.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, that argument was hard to make, because more and more questions were raised about evidence supporting these treatments. Discovery from a lawsuit against a similar ban in Alabama suggested political influence, publication bias and groupthink had impacted the work of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which publishes the most influential guidelines on the topic. And because other medical associations appeared to be taking cues from WPATH, this undermined the argument that these interventions were backed by a strong medical consensus.

Without that, we were left with semantic arguments about what constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. The result was a major setback for the trans rights movement — not just a loss in this case, but a precedent that will make it harder to win elsewhere.

Given how predictable this was, I have wondered why the ACLU brought a case where the risks were so great and the odds of winning so negligible.

One could argue that with states across the country passing bans on gender-affirming care for minors — 27 at last count — it had to try, even if it was likely to fail. But organizations such as the ACLU have always had to be strategic, picking fights they think they can win, or at least lose gracefully.

See rest of article

[coochiequeens]

[coochiequeens]

It's one thing to fight against discrimination against LGB adults. It's another thing to fight for life-altering medical treatments for minors.

The ACLU bet big on a trans rights case. Its loss was predictable.

A Supreme Court ruling shows trans advocates failed to see the fragility of the liberal consensus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/21/supreme-court-youth-gender-transition-ban/

opinion by Megan McArdle June 21, 2025

Trans rights advocates, as well as opponents of gender-affirming care for minors, demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

It was clear from oral arguments that the ACLU was going to lose U.S. v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender transition treatments for minors. But really, it was clear long before that.

The plaintiffs were facing six conservative justices who needed to be convinced that such treatments are so compelling — as the litany goes, “lifesaving, evidence-based and medically necessary” — that states could have no good reason to ban them.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, that argument was hard to make, because more and more questions were raised about evidence supporting these treatments. Discovery from a lawsuit against a similar ban in Alabama suggested political influence, publication bias and groupthink had impacted the work of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which publishes the most influential guidelines on the topic. And because other medical associations appeared to be taking cues from WPATH, this undermined the argument that these interventions were backed by a strong medical consensus.

Without that, we were left with semantic arguments about what constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. The result was a major setback for the trans rights movement — not just a loss in this case, but a precedent that will make it harder to win elsewhere.

Given how predictable this was, I have wondered why the ACLU brought a case where the risks were so great and the odds of winning so negligible.

One could argue that with states across the country passing bans on gender-affirming care for minors — 27 at last count — it had to try, even if it was likely to fail. But organizations such as the ACLU have always had to be strategic, picking fights they think they can win, or at least lose gracefully.

See rest of article

[coochiequeens]

Re-eclect Democratic state Rep. Shelia Stubbs

Effort comes after murder of 19-year-old Sade Robinson in Milwaukee

By Evan Casey  June 23, 2025

Rep. Shelia Stubbs speaks during a press conference Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

A Wisconsin lawmaker is renewing her push to create a state task force on missing and murdered Black women after the high-profile murder of a Milwaukee woman last year.

Democratic state Rep. Shelia Stubbs, a Black lawmaker from Madison, first introduced a bill to create the task force three years ago. She introduced the bill again last year, but it failed to get a vote in the Senate. She’s now trying for a third time after the death of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was killed by a man she met for a first date.

“Three years is three years too long,” Stubbs said. “How many victims have we lost waiting on time?” 

Robinson went missing after she went out to dinner and drinks with Maxwell Anderson on April 1, 2024. Earlier this month, a jury found Anderson guilty of killing and dismembering Robinson.

Stubbs said she’s built a relationship with Robinson’s mother, Sheena Scarbrough, and has spoken with her often over the past few months. Stubbs was in the courtroom when the guilty verdict was read.

“It was just a moment of … thankfulness, a moment of feeling like our prayers were answered,” Stubbs said of the verdict. 

Standing outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse moments after the jury convicted Anderson, Scarbrough said she’ll be working with Stubbs to get the task force started in Wisconsin. 

“We’re pushing for the missing and murdered task force,” Scarbrough said during a press conference. “It’s mandatory.” 

“The state definitely needs it for our BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] women, for all women,” she added. 

Sade Robinson. Photo courtesy Milwaukee Police Department

A 2022 investigation by The Guardian found that an average of five Black women and girls were killed every day in the United States in 2020. The National Crime Information Center found that in 2022, more than 97,000 Black women and girls were reported missing.

A 2024 report in the Lancet found that in Wisconsin in 2019 and 2020, “Black women aged 25–44 years were 20 times more likely to die by homicide than White women.”

Stubbs called those statistics “alarming.”

“This is the state that I live in,” Stubbs said. “This is the state I’m raising my 15-year-old in.” 

The main goal of the task force, Stubbs said, would be to, “investigate systemic causes of violence against African American women and girls.”

“I want to really look at the policies from law enforcement that they’re using to search for these missing families,” she said.

Stubbs also wants to improve data collection in the state around the issue. 

“But most important, we need to develop aid to victims [and] their families in our community,” Stubbs said.

The task force would have law enforcement members, legal experts, experts in the field of gender-based violence and representatives from organizations that provide aid to Black women. It would also have survivors and victims of gender-based violence or their family members. 

Stubbs said the “victims” would be the most important people on the task force. 

A group of supporters and family of Sade Robinson gathered outside of the Milwaukee County Courthouse on June 6, 2025. Evan Casey/WPR

Stubbs said the first time she introduced the bill, it did not have bipartisan support. The second time she introduced the measure, it had the support of Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, and Sen. Jesse James, R-Altoona — who both signed on as cosponsors.

After the bill was introduced last year, End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin Executive Director Monique Minkens said the task force would be a “step in the direction of saving lives.”

But after the bill passed in the Assembly, it was not taken up for a vote in the Senate after some pushback from former Sen. Duey Stroebel. 

Schraa is no longer in office. James was not available for comment.

Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed budget included funding for a staff member for the task force, which would be housed in the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention, according to the budget proposal. But the powerful Joint Finance Committee removed that provision in the budget.

In a statement, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said he supports the creation of the task force.

“I fully support action by the state legislature to create and provide the resources needed for a task force on missing and murdered African American women and girls,” Kaul wrote in the statement. “It’s critical for this task force to have adequate state funding so the task force has the resources it needs to help effect meaningful change.”

In an interview with WPR, Stubbs said she’s not yet sure when she’ll officially reintroduce the bill for the task force. 

“But I am going to say this very loud and clear: We are going to fight until this bill becomes law across the state of Wisconsin,” Stubbs said.

Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2025, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

[coochiequeens]

[coochiequeens]

The fact that we're supposed to pretend this is something other than a white man in a dress is insane. How long are they going to keep pushing this? A man who wears a dress is not a different category of human.

[coochiequeens]

so happy for her <3

source: thehotbyte

[coochiequeens]

Everything I see about the Blake Lively v Justin Baldoni situation is like:

Blake: Justin made me uncomfortable with his sexual comments and advances, did not make me feel safe doing intimate scenes and joked about how he wasn’t HR trained when it was brought up to him. Other crew members saw these instances occur and are supporting me

Justin: Ok that may be true but she was really mean and bossy and tried to take over MY movie and her husband made fun of me for being a performative feminist :( also Taylor Swift was there

Everyone, for some reason: OMG Blake gives such mean girl vibes. Justin seems like such a sweet sensitive soul. Glad he was able to prove she lied!

[coochiequeens]

[coochiequeens]

Every time I spot a Harry Potter fan, I am both appalled and surprised.

How can there be any fans left at this point?!

Grow up already!!

AND STOP ENABLING TERF BEHAVIOUR!!!!

[coochiequeens]

Kinda wild that every time a trans athlete does well it’s all about “ooh wahh but biological advantages” as if the kind of person who is both “Good At And Interested In Winning Competitive Sports” and also “Willing To Risk Losing Their Safety And Everything They Love In Order To Seize Life By The Ass And Be Who They Are Out Loud And In Public In A Society Prepared To Shred Them Alive” isn’t the kind of supremely driven person who might be actually pretty well-suited to Work Hard Get Point

[coochiequeens]

Kinda wild that every time a trans athlete does well it’s all about “ooh wahh but biological advantages” as if the kind of person who is both “Good At And Interested In Winning Competitive Sports” and also “Willing To Risk Losing Their Safety And Everything They Love In Order To Seize Life By The Ass And Be Who They Are Out Loud And In Public In A Society Prepared To Shred Them Alive” isn’t the kind of supremely driven person who might be actually pretty well-suited to Work Hard Get Point

[coochiequeens]

If you use rape analogies for things that have nothing to do with rape - you are an asshole.

[coochiequeens]

First of all, prostitution is not the oldest profession- it's the oldest form of slavery. The oldest profession is midwifery. So jot that down.

[coochiequeens]

interesting how the group who is so adamant that it is reductive to define women by biology also uses such language as uterus havers, menstruators, and the like when specifying female people. For them, it is perfectly alright to explicitly reduce female people to our body parts.

By then saying that it is offensive to women to define womanhood through our bodies, it is the trans rights activists who are saying that they find having a female body to be a reductive state of being. This is obvious in their language, through and through.

[coochiequeens]