Had to happen

Long-time bloggers warned me: "Someday, you're gonna find yourself writing about hermaphrodites," they warned me. And here I am. I'll try to keep the language scientific. Der Post:

A woman charged with theft, fraud and bond-jumping is faking a mental disorder to avoid prosecution and is competent to stand trial, a judge has ruled.

El Paso County District Judge Edward Colt said he based his decision to order Storme Shannon Aerison, 42, to stand trial on conclusions by a psychiatrist at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo and on his personal observations from Aerison's court testimony during a 2005 hearing . . . .

Storme. Shannon. Aerison.

Aerison was born with both male and female genitalia. She has been held at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo since 2004 after another state judge ruled her incompetent to stand trial in 2003.

Psychiatrists had testified Aerison suffered from dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

But last week El Paso County District Judge Edward Colt believed a psychiatrist in Pueblo who wrote: "Aerison is feigning cognitive impairment in an effort to avoid prosecution."

Aerison made national news in 1990 when, at the age of 26, she was arrested for criminal impersonation for enrolling at Coronado High School as a 17-year-old and joining the female cheerleading squad.

Unbelievably, the Post doesn't have a picture of Storme, so here's one from her cheerleading days I found in Westword (and here's their story). The Post continues:

Aerison never had sex-assignment surgery, according to court testimony. Her parents named their child Charles Daugherty, but she legally changed it to Storme Aerison when she decided to be a woman . . . .

Police have investigated allegations that Aerison posed as a model and defrauded photographers, calendar companies and overseas hotels out of money, airline tickets and rooms, promising to advertise their businesses in fictitious calendars featuring the self-described "supermodel."

In one of the charges, according to Colorado Springs police, Aerison - using the name Christy Gabriel - convinced an Air Force Academy cadet, a Colorado State University student, and a West Point cadet that she was a swimsuit model, then used the men to fund and staff a photo shoot in Hawaii.

Just in case you were wondering:

Aerison is being held in the men's jail of the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center because of a policy requiring anyone with male sex organs to be housed there. No court date has been set.