LITTLE ROCK — A Clay County woman who has struggled all her life with a rare medical condition that causes her to fluctuate between the extremes of masculinity and femininity may finally get some much-needed help in prison, her attorney said Tuesday.
Attorney Jennifer B. Wiggins was referring to Lisa Dawn Shipley, 39, of Rector, who was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright to eight years in prison, with a special request that she be housed in a federal medical facility.
Shipley pleaded guilty on Dec. 11 to a charge of possession of child pornography - a charge so rarely leveled against a woman that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons doesn't even have a rehabilitation program to address it.
Although Shipley's mother contends that Shipley downloaded more than 7,000 images of child pornography only to try to "figure out who she is," Wiggins didn't raise that argument at the sentencing hearing.
The North Little Rock attorney did, however, discuss Shipley's rare medical condition,congenital adrenal hyperplasia, in a document filed with the court, asking the judge to consider Shipley's struggles with the condition, as well as her abuse by a male relative at age 14, in considering the sentence.
Wright's sentence was at the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines.
Wiggins' sentencing memorandum notes that Shipley was born on Aug. 31, 1969, with what appeared to be deformed male genitalia and initially was believed to be a boy. Three weeks later, when the child was hospi-talized as a result of severe dehydration, doctors discovered that the baby named Matthew Alan Shipley was actually a girl, according to the memo, as well as letters in the file from Shipley's mother and aunt.
The doctors discovered that Shipley was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, also known as adrenogenital syndrome, a condition in which her adrenal glands are overgrown and cannot adequately produce cortisol and the hormones aldosterone and androgen. It was the overproduction of androgen before her birth that caused her genitalia to appear male, Wiggins said, and also caused the child to nearly die of dehydration.
Wiggins noted that Shipley didn't have surgery to correct the male-appearing genitalia until she was nine, which meant that she remained different from other children, and confused, for several years.
Although she began developing normally as a female with a regular course of injections, "the memory of being born a boy did not disappear," Wiggins wrote. "In fact, she claims that the surgery has somewhat reversed and her external genitalia appears male again."
Once Shipley reached adulthood, she stopped the injections, which were expensive, and her outward appearance became "markedly more male," Wiggins said. The memo described how Shipley's appearance went back and forth between female and male as Shipley started and stopped the medication because she couldn't afford it.
"One other unusual aspect of this case should be noted: Lisa claims to have both fathered a child and given birth to a child," Wiggins said, noting that the information was unconfirmed. Shipley has said the child she bore died at age 14, and the child she fathered with a former girlfriend is still alive, according to the memo.
Wiggins noted that while Shipley has tattoos of naked women on her body, she reported becoming romantically involved with a man after again starting to take her medications.
Shipley was arrested on childpornography charges after she took her computer to a repair shop, where the illegal material was discovered.
Discussing some of the pictures and videos found on Shipley's computer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon argued that they were too extreme to have simply been attempts to try to understand what a girl's body should look like. One of the videos showed a girl about 8 or 9 years old having various types of sex with a grown man.
Standing before the judge Tuesday, Shipley's long, brown, wavy hair cascaded to the middle of her back on a petite frame. When she spoke, her voice sounded like that of a man.
Wright told Shipley she would recommend that the prison segregate her from both men and women, for her own safety. The judge also recommended to the prison that Shipley be seen by an endocrinologist.
"Everything about this case is unusual," Wiggins said later. "I hope she gets the help she needs."
Arkansas, Pages 9, 18 on 08/26/2009