John Mongan, 24, was jailed for three years on 3 September after he admitted attacking a transgender husband and wife on Baring Road in Eltham on 18 April. He punched the husband, bit the wife, and attempted to pull her dress down, threatening both victims with machetes during the assault. Woolwich Crown Court heard the woman say the harassment feels like it is getting worse. It is.

What happened on Baring Road

It started with Mongan shouting from the passenger seat of a van. The woman raised her middle finger. That was the entirety of the provocation: a woman who declined to be humiliated in the street.

Her husband took a photo of the van. Mongan got out and told him to delete it. When he did not, Mongan punched him repeatedly, then turned on the woman when she stepped in to help. He bit her. He tried to pull her dress down. He threatened them both with machetes. Both were taken to hospital with significant injuries.

The husband's victim impact statement was five words: "I thought he was going to kill us both." I have read a lot of victim statements over the years. Few carry that kind of weight so briefly.

The woman's was longer, and in some ways harder to read. "This isn't the first time I've been harassed in the street in the middle of the day," she said. "It feels like it's getting worse." She fears for her safety now, she said, because she dared to notice Mongan's behaviour.

Dared to notice. Think about that for a moment. A woman walking down a street in broad daylight felt that the correct response to being shouted at from a van was to say nothing, look away, and keep moving, because to do otherwise carries a risk of serious violence. She knew that from experience. This was not the first time.

The man, and the judge's conclusion

Judge Christopher Grout described Mongan's record as "appalling" for someone his age, with numerous convictions for violent offences. The defence asked for a suspended sentence on the grounds that Mongan had shown accountability and that his partner was expecting their first child. The judge declined. His conclusion was straightforward: Mongan poses a risk to the public, including "random members of the public who you, for whatever reason, take umbrage with."

That phrase is worth keeping. Random members of the public. Whatever reason. What the judge is describing is a man who identifies a target, decides he dislikes them, and acts. The transgender identity of the victims was not incidental to that. It was the reason the van stopped.

What the rhetoric does

John Mongan is responsible for what John Mongan did. The judge is right that he poses a risk, and a three-year sentence is the appropriate response to what he admitted doing. None of what follows is an attempt to distribute his culpability.

But the woman's words stay with me: it feels like it is getting worse. She is not wrong. The number of recorded hate crimes against trans people in the UK has risen sharply over recent years. And that does not happen in a vacuum.

When politicians describe trans women as men in women's spaces in tones of outrage, when guidance bodies publish documents that frame trans people's ordinary use of public facilities as a threat, when newspapers run front pages treating the existence of trans people as a crisis requiring urgent national debate: that framing does not stay in the meeting rooms and the editorial offices where it is produced. It moves. It tells people who were already inclined towards hostility that their hostility is reasonable, that it is shared, that it has the backing of serious institutions.

It does not cause any individual to throw a punch. But it shapes the atmosphere in which a man feels entitled to shout at strangers from a van, and to escalate when one of them declines to be invisible.

The woman in this case raised her middle finger. She had every right to. The idea that doing so in response to unprovoked abuse was a reasonable basis for the violence that followed is not a thought that arises in isolation. It is a thought that flourishes when trans people have been consistently framed as less deserving of ordinary dignity.

What three years means

Mongan will serve some portion of his sentence and be released. The couple on Baring Road will carry the consequences of that afternoon for considerably longer. The husband thought he was going to die. The woman is afraid to walk down a street. Those are not things that resolve when a prison term ends.

Three years is the correct outcome given what the law allows and what he admitted to. I am glad the judge refused the suspended sentence. I am glad the court heard those victim impact statements read aloud. I hope both of them are getting support, and I hope they are able, in time, to feel safe again in the place where they live.

And I hope that the people who set the terms of the public conversation about trans lives read those five words from the husband, and understand that words have weight, and that weight lands somewhere.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP.