A transgender-identifying teenager is advocating for leniency in the sentencing of his father, who was convicted on child pornography charges, due to support of his efforts to compete in women’s sports. Marc Jacques, a former Dartmouth College employee, was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison for distributing child pornography. In a letter to the court, Jacques cited his transgender-identifying child, Maelle Jacques, as a reason to request a non-custodial sentence.
Federal authorities began investigating Jacques in February 2022 after receiving reports through CyberTip, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s centralized reporting system. The messaging platform Kik flagged Jacques for uploading 49 files depicting child sexual abuse material to other users via private messages. A search warrant executed at his home revealed over 100 files of child pornography on his laptop, phone, and desktop computer, according to Reduxx.
Despite pleading guilty in February and waiving his right to a jury trial, Jacques was initially released on the condition that he self-report for hearings, as he had full custody of his two sons.
His son, Maelle Jacques, identifies as transgender and is a controversial athlete at Kearsarge Regional High School who has advocated for removing female-only sports to allow biological men to compete. In a letter to the court, Maelle praised his father’s "sheer determination to improve from mistakes he’s made in the past" and argued that a prison sentence would hinder his own efforts to advocate for transgender athletes. Maelle also expressed concern that his college education could be affected without his father’s financial support.
“The work I have begun to do with the ACLU in regard to my existence as a trans girl in sports is also reliant upon his moral support in my testifying and meeting with Senators,” Maelle wrote. “A prison sentence would also harm me and my brother’s future as we would stop receiving support for college payments without his salary.”
Marc Jacques echoed these concerns in his own letter to the court, warning that his son may be at risk of suicide if he were sent to prison, citing a lack of support for Maelle’s transgender identity from his mother.
“Transgendered teens have the highest rate of suicide in the United States, and I am afraid for Maelle and her path if she is forced to live with her mother and her stepmother in a home where she is not supported and feels unwelcome,” Jacques wrote.
Despite these appeals, Marc Jacques was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison on September 9. He has been ordered to surrender to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons by December 2.
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