Darren Merager enters the Los Angeles County Superior Court - West District
LAMag/Jeremy Lee Quinn
The not guilty verdict for Darren Merager was read aloud to an audience of one in the Los Angeles courtroom gallery. Gone were the leftist activists and black clad ‘SoCal Antifa’ militants who attacked conservative demonstrators outside WiSpa in the name of “smashing transphobia.” Gone were the Christian conservatives and self-identifying trans-exclusionary feminists who found common cause, protesting for traditional women’s spaces in July of 2021. Gone were all the other reporters.
There were bombshells throughout the 4 week jury trial. An email from a WiSpa manager named Mr. Suh was entered into evidence. It instructed ‘managers on duty’ not to admit customer Darren Merager, the now 55-year-old heterosexual male who also identifies as transgender (referred to as he/him and she/her on the record). The ignored email referred to a customer only by an ID number. The prosecution submitted that the communication predated the night in 2021 that the embattled bather sat nude on the edge of the spa jacuzzi tub, legs akimbo, until female patrons complained… and then filed police reports weeks later. A woman recorded a viral video that night, objecting to a penis on the women’s side of the 24 hour Korean spa. The public firestorm was followed by felony criminal charges.
“They let the defendant in,” the jury foreman commented after the final day of the four-week trial in May of 2025, which cleared Merager of indecent exposure charges at both the WiSpa near LA’s Koreatown and a similar incident at the West Hollywood Aquatic Center in 2018.
The author of the viral WiSpa video, a woman named Christina R. who went by ‘cubana angel’ online, did not even testify for the prosecution. It would have meant entering the selfie-video of Christina complaining at WiSpa into evidence.
The defense wanted the video played– so the jury could hear the colorful reactions from those set against Merager that night. What’s more, absent from the extended video was any mention of the key claim that might prove sexual intent: an alleged erection. Judge Joseph Burghardt ruled to the dismay of the defense that only a short section of the WiSpa kerfuffle could be played sans audio.
Pronoun discipline was a Herculean task throughout the month of the trial. The defense attorney and judge constantly shifted between referring to Merager as “he” and “she” and Merager’s attributes as “his penis” and “her penis.” Deputy Prosecutor Karen Montoya only slipped up once over the 4 week ordeal and quickly apologized, correcting herself after straying from genderless terminology. Merager was unoffended, as the defendant accepts being referred to by both sets of pronouns. The jury was asked to decide, by official language, if the defendant exposed “himself/herself” with the intent of sexual gratification.
Jurors came to a ‘not guilty’ decision in less than an hour and a half. The foreman summed up the prosecution’s case to me in three simple words: “It wasn’t enough.”
Testimony of an alleged erection was inconsistent, yet, a previous judge had ruled that the claim was sufficient pre-trial evidence to go forward. One woman, a mother at the spa with her two teenage daughters, changed her characterization of Merager over the years. The defense seized on the witness's account differing from the police report to the preliminary hearing and then at the trial. The woman's testimony escalated to claims of the defendant's “hand on his thigh”– to then, via the court Spanish language interpreter, insinuations of more animated activity.
A witness that jurors told me they found to be one of the most credible appeared on behalf of the defense. She was a psychiatric nurse practitioner who was also in the nude area of the spa with her two daughters. She admitted to concern over Merager’s presence– but also could see Merager for the better part of a half hour through the window of the sauna, as the defendant remained at the jacuzzi pool. Doctor Natarajan testified Merager’s demeanor was “pleasant” and that there was no erection.
Jurors told me that they were suspicious that two WiSpa complainants said they just happened to show up at the same time at an LA police station to file police reports, weeks after the WiSpa incident. Another prosecution witness dramatically took the stand at the very last minute. A woman named Tamra was upset that her autistic daughter had to bear witness to Merager’s manhood in the women’s showers of a Sherman Oaks pool. She offered up a litany of choice words in court and admitted to telling Merager “I’ll drag you out by your hair.” Jury members told me that the highly charged witness testimony did not help the prosecution.
Amazingly, the Sherman Oaks incident took place during the actual trial, on what should have been the third day of jury selection at the end of April. Merager had gone to the ER to get physical ailments checked out. As a result, court proceedings were cancelled for the day. Then, Merager went to the Sherman Oaks pool where yet another incident of controversy played out. It all spectacularly came to the court’s attention, as a sister of a jury candidate happened to be there. The juror researched and reported back to the court what she had learned (and was removed from the jury pool, naturally).
If anything, the defendant was consistent, continuing to bathe in the women’s section of pools and spas in LA, Orange County and Palm Springs, even after the headline-grabbing WiSpa incident of 2021. Merager seized on the right to do so as California’s legislature passed gender self-identification in 2018. The Gender Recognition Act was brought forward by California legislators Scott Wiener and Toni Atkins before being signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2019.
The first week that the law went into effect, Merager, who has an extensive rap sheet in Southern California from incidents of indecent exposure to motor vehicle theft to spearheading a multimillion-dollar art heist caper, registered with the DMV as female. Per the new law, no medical documentation was necessary. Merager acknowledged having had quite enough of male spaces following stints in men's prisons. Merager’s origin story or “gender journey” began with a 2017 car accident, after which a therapist brought up the possibility that Darren might lose his lower extremities. And– had Merager ever considered gender fluidity?
“It all clicked,” Merager characterized his first epiphany that he/she was androgynous male and female, a transgender designation Merager considers distinct from “non binary.”
But none of Merager’s “gender journey” or sexuality were part of the case. The jury was told it could consider Merager’s 2003 plea deal for a public masturbation charge. But the jury could not convict on priors alone. So it didn’t.
Merager’s driver's license with a female marker was projected on screen in the courtroom by Defense Attorney Elliot Tiomkin during the opening remarks. Deputy Prosecutor Montoya matched Tiomkin every step of the way, arguing that the driver's license had come into existence only after the West Hollywood incident, which upset parents of a girls' swim team. Two of the children at the public pool, now adults, testified that they were ”shocked” by Merager showering in the buff, no curtain drawn, while fellow swim team members giggled and scurried away in their swimsuits.
Yet, jurors decided that Merager hadn’t actually done anything except what others were doing. Merager showered, toweled off and changed clothes. He didn’t stare at others or solicit their attention verbally.
So it would all come down to the penis– an organ shrouded in reasonable doubt. Witness descriptions varied from “slightly lifted” to “not flat” to “45 degrees”, as the prosecution interpreted an Eastern European mother’s shape made with her hands to indicate the alleged offending angle. The women who were minors at the time of the incidents varied in their descriptions as well. But one summed up her emotional state on the stand by saying simply, “I knew I shouldn’t have been seeing that.”
Merager’s reaction? “I’m relieved,” the defendant told me after the verdict was read, as the felony charges could have led to serious jail time given Merager’s history. Merager plans to continue to use the women’s side at facilities and says he still calls in advance to confirm the policy for transgender patrons.
“I’m something of a pioneer,” Merager marveled of his status, now innocent of all charges. That said, Merager is considering a possible move to Europe to live in a country with more “evolved” attitudes towards nudity.
Defense attorney Tiomkin evoked Clarence Darrow in his opening statements, casting Merager among the unjustly “damned” given the multiple felony charges. Here in tolerant California, there had been much ado, with jurors deciding in the end that Darren Merager simply was behaving like any other woman in a shower, spa or changing room.
One female juror approached Merager at the end of the trial that had taken up 4 weeks of her and everybody else’s lives. “You are a guest in a woman’s space,” she told Merager. She then offered some words of advice for the now exonerated defendant, given his male attributes.
“You should please cover up,” she said.
