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Transgender athlete Shieys Chepkosgei alias Hillary Kiprotich has been charged with a criminal offence for presenting false documents to the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK).

The accused athlete first hit the headlines in 2019 when Eldoret West Police Station officers found out that she appeared masculine despite claiming to be a woman.

Then, the athlete had been arraigned at an Eldoret court for impersonating a female nurse at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.  She revealed herself to be a transgender woman and demanded to be given special treatment while in custody.

People Sport understands that Chepkosgei had in 2017 been sanctioned by ADAK for using banned performance-enhancing substances. The athlete was charged with using banned testosterone, androsterone and etiocholanolone during the Hari Sukan Negara Half Marathon in Malaysia in October 2016. She was slapped with a four-year ban.

On Friday, the athlete was arrested and arraigned before the Chief Magistrate’s court in Eldoret for presenting a forged post-natal discharge summary and a notification of birth, purporting to be issued by Uasin Gishu County Hospital.

The athlete who was under the ban, after she was sanctioned by the Sports Dispute Tribunal for testing positive for a prohibited substance, participated in a sporting event during her period of ineligibility which constitutes an Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) as stipulated by the World Anti-Doping Code. 

In her defence, she presented the forged postnatal discharge summary and notification of birth alleging that she had been admitted at the said facility where she gave birth to a baby boy through a caesarean section and had not recovered and thus could not have travelled to participate in the sporting event.

ADAK’s Investigations and Intelligence Gathering Unit proceeded to conduct verification of those medical documents. Uasin Gishu District Hospital confirmed that the documents had been forged and that the athlete had not been treated or seen at the said hospital.

Pleaded not guilty

This revelation led to the athlete’s arraignment before the court. She was charged under section 345, read with section 349 of the penal code and section 42 (1) paragraph (e) of the Anti-Doping Act. She pleaded not guilty and was released on bail. The case will be mentioned on 28th March 2022.

This case comes less than two years after an Eldoret court directed the prosecution to stop referring to a transgender woman by her male name and instead use her preferred feminine identity.

The court gave the orders during the mention of a case in which Shieys Chepkosgei has been accused of obtaining registration documents under pretences.

In the charge sheet, the prosecution had referred to the accused as “Shieys Chepkosgei alias Hillary Kiprotich”. The accused, however, wants to be identified as a woman.  The athlete had then argued that she was being subjected to psychological torture by being referred to as a man.

“For the interest of prosecuting this case as fast as possible, from now henceforth, she will be referred to as Shieys Chepkosgei and not ‘alias Hillary Kiprotich’,” Eldoret Chief Magistrate Linus Kassan had then ordered.