A 64-year-old Belgian man wants to have his marriage annulled after he discovered that his Indonesian wife of 19 years had been born a man and had later undergone a sex change. The man, named Jan, married Monica in 1993 despite legal difficulties raised by the Belgian immigration authorities, Telegraph reported. It was a recent discovery that 48-year-old Monica had been born a man.
"I feel I've been assaulted," Jan told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.
"It was a difficult task to bring Monica to Belgium. The Belgian courts had serious doubts about the authenticity of her birth and her identity papers, but over time had accepted it anyway. I thought she was an attractive woman, all woman. She had no male traits," the Telegraph quoted Jan as saying. Jan said he and his wife had decided not to have children because he had two by his previous marriage and Monica continued the deception by pretending to menstruate, using sanitary towels, "to conceal the truth".
"Even during sex, I never noticed anything," Jan said. For many years, the couple lived a normal family life and Monica was like a "big sister" to his children until their marriage started to come under strain when Monica got a new full-time job.
"Monica began to change very much," Jan said.
"My oldest son saw her sometimes at a nightclub. She began to wear very flashy clothes, those ultra-short skirts or tiny tops, so her abdomen was completely exposed," Jan said. Jan found "amorous messages" from other men on Monica’s computer. "A friend told me that he had heard that Monica was actually a sex-changed man. I could not believe it. My son heard similar rumors," Jan said. A confrontation led to a domestic dispute and the police were called. Jan is undergoing psychiatric treatment following the discovery. Belgian courts have so far refused to let the marriage be annulled.
