Holly MatkinLancaster, CA – The 26-year-old child molester who was sentenced as a juvenile due to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon’s sweeping policy changes was recorded in a jailhouse phone call gloating about the lenient sentence she knew she was slated to receive.
Hannah Tubbs, a 26-year-old transgender woman also known as James Tubbs, was two weeks shy of her 18th birthday when she attacked a 10-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Denny’s restaurant on New Year’s Day of 2014, KTTV reported.
Prosecutors said Tubbs identified as a male at the time, but started identifying as female when she was arrested for the offense years later, according to FOX News.
Since shortly after taking office in December of 2020, Gascon has flatly refused to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The progressive district attorney defended his sweeping policy change by citing studies that indicate the human brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25.
He has argued that putting young adults in adult prisons would only make them more hardened, but that they could be rehabilitated if kept in the juvenile court system, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Tubbs was recorded in a jailhouse phone calls laughing and bragging about the fact that she wouldn’t have to register as a sex offender or to serve time in prison due to Gascon’s policies, FOX News reported.
“I’m gonna plead out to it, plead guilty,” she said in one recording. “They’re gonna stick me on probation, and it’s gonna be dropped, it’s gonna be done, I won’t have to register, won’t have to do nothing.”
Tubbs’ father asked her if she would be required to register as a sex offender, at which point Tubbs gloated she “won’t have to do none of that,” according to FOX News.
“So, what are they going to do to you then?” her father inquired.
“Nothing!” she responded before breaking into laughter.
Tubbs also made multiple explicit remarks about the 10-year-old victim, which FOX News refused to print due to their callousness.
“I was young and I was hungry for some meat,” she was recorded saying at one point, according to the Los Angeles Times.
On one call, Tubbs told the person he was talking to that they needed to use female pronouns when speaking about her.
“They’re going to put me with other trannies that have seen their cases like mine or with one tranny like me that has a case like mine,” Tubbs said, according to FOX News. “So, when you come to court, make sure you address me as her.”
“I know it will be hard, but you have to do it,” she added, according to the Los Angeles Times.
EXCLUSIVE: In in-custody phone calls, 26 y/o transgender child molester Hannah Tubbs boasts about not having to serve prison time or register as a sex offender before being sentenced to 2 yrs in a juvenile facility after LA DA @GeorgeGascon refused to prosecute Tubbs as an adult. pic.twitter.com/n9KesabvXE
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) February 21, 2022
Sources said the recordings were made between November of 2021 and mid-January of this year, and that Gascon’s office was well aware of them, the Los Angeles Times reported.
But due to Gascon’s refusal to prosecute her as an adult, the most California Superior Court Judge Mario Barrera could legally sentence her to was two years in a juvenile facility, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“I want to be clear. The filing of a transfer motion is entirely within the discretion of the district attorney,” Barrera said during a hearing on Jan. 27.
The judge noted he was “extremely limited” in the sentences he could impose due to Gascon’s refusal to transfer the case to adult court, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Tubbs, who has already been in custody for one year, will serve the balance of her sentence in a juvenile facility, which Barrera noted was required by law.
Since Gascon refused to prosecute the case in adult court, Tubbs also won’t be required to register as a sex offender, the New York Post reported.
Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna said Barrera’s “hands were tied” because of Gascon’s policy, FOX News reported.
“[He] decided he did not have the authority to issue an order housing Tubbs in county jail or with the sheriff’s department,” Sanna said, according to FOX News.
Sanna told the Los Angeles Times he received access to the jailhouse recordings on Jan. 20 and that two of Gascon’s top aides were both aware of what Tubbs had said, the Los Angeles Times reported.
He said he was pulled off of the case a day after he notified his supervisors about what Tubbs had said.
“They demanded the recordings from me like three weeks ago,” Sanna told the Los Angeles Times.
One of Gascon’s top aides claimed Sanna is lying about what occurred, and said the other aides he notified about the content of the recordings were unaware the calls had been so “disturbing in nature.”
Despite allegations his office was aware of the jailhouse recordings, Gascon released a statement Feb. 21 claiming he had no knowledge about Tubbs’ comments until after she was sentenced.
“Ms. Tubbs had several charges in other counties after the juvenile offense but never received any services which both her past behavior and that subsequent to her arrest demonstrates she clearly needs,” Gascon said, according to FOX News. “After her sentencing in our case, I became aware of extremely troubling statements she made about her case, the resolution of it and the young girl that she harmed.”
Gascon claimed his office “learned a lot from the Hannah Tubbs case about the need for a policy safety valve.”
“Like every responsible office, we learn as we go, take feedback from the community, and make necessary adjustments based on our experiences and the complex nature of this work,” he wrote, according to FOX News.
Gascon’s office walked back some of the sweeping policies in a series of memos to staff members last week, noting that exceptions will be made in certain cases involving juveniles in order for them to be tried in adult court from here on out.
He previously denied the changes were due to backlash from the Tubbs case, and claimed last week he still believed the child molester’s case “does not belong in adult court,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
On Sunday, he conceded that the “complex issues and facts of her particular case were unusual” and that he “should have treated them that way,” according to the paper.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall said Gascon’s change of heart was nothing more than an 11th-hour attempt to save face.
“He knew FOX was going to run with those tapes,” Siddall said. “It was damage-control time.”
Gascon maintained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Monday that he had no prior knowledge of the recordings and that he was “very, very upset” with Tubbs.
“It’s unfortunate that she gamed the system,” he told the paper. “If I had to do it all over again, she would be prosecuted in adult court.”
He further conceded that Tubbs took advantage of the district attorney’s office, and that she potentially identified as transgender in an effort to land herself a more lenient sentence.
Prosecutors said the 2014 attack occurred at a Denny’s restaurant in Palmdale, KTTV reported.
Tubbs grabbed the child by the throat, locked her inside a stall, then shoved her hand down the girl’s pants and sexually assaulted her, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“[Tubbs] immediately attacked her, restrained her, and he physically penetrated her in a sexual manner,” Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John McKinney told KTTV.
The attack only ended when someone walked into the bathroom, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Tubbs fled the restaurant and wasn’t apprehended until 2019, when a DNA sample taken from her in connection with a burglary arrest in Idaho linked her to the 2014 assault.
“He went unidentified for several years until a cold DNA hit identified him as someone who was arrested in the state of Idaho,” McKinney told KTTV.
McKinney said Tubbs racked up a slew of other criminal charges after sexually assaulting the little girl, to include being convicted of multiple assaults with deadly weapons.
Tubbs has also been arrested on probation violation, battery, and drug possession offenses out of both Washington state and Idaho, and has a pending misdemeanor case open in one jurisdiction, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami, who works in the Complex Child Abuse Unit, told the New York Post that the little girl isn’t Tubbs’ only victim.
“There are some cases where the juvenile has committed a violent crime against an innocent victim and is dangerous to society. Tubbs is one of those cases,” Hatami said. “She is now 26 years old. Unlike George Gascon’s false narrative, she is not a ‘kid.’ She has a violent criminal record as an adult. She has also sexually assaulted two young girls in different incidents. Young, innocent girls who will now have to deal with lifelong trauma.”
The victim of the assault provided the court with a written statement during a Dec. 14, 2021 hearing, according to the New York Post.
The message was read aloud in court.
The victim told the judge she began receiving mental health counseling after the attack because it left her with feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, and occasional suicidal thoughts, the New York Post reported.
“I just wanted to forget I’m part of any of this…And I’m constantly reminded of my past because of this case,” she wrote. “I live in fear most of the time, and although it’s something that I tried to tell myself isn’t my fault, I could never truly believe it. I feel that I’m to blame somehow, when I know deep down that isn’t the case.”
“I chose not to come into court because I couldn’t stand the thought of having to see my attackers’ face again,” she added. “And I hope, after all of this comes to an end my attacker gets the punishment, he deserves for attacking a child with no problem and I can finally get on with my life.”
The victim told FOX News in a recent interview that she received “no true justice” and that the way the case was handled by Gascon’s office was hurtful, unfair, and insulting.
“The things he did to me and made me do that day was beyond horrible for a ten-year-old girl to have to go through,” she said. “I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.”
“I’ve also heard that my attacker goes by she/them pronouns now,” she told FOX News. “I see it also unfair to try him as a woman as well, seeing how he clearly didn’t act like one on January 1st of 2014.”
Sandy Malone