Two officers in New South Wales are facing breach of privacy charges after they told 26-year-old Garrick Jacobson, who was being held last September for being suspected of theft, that according to their records his girlfriend was once a man.

Brigitte Fell underwent a sex change operation in 1996. She said Jacobson was never told because "he was temperamental enough." He ended up going to her place. "He was belting the hell out of me," she said. Then she fell off a balcony.

She said, "My whole face was broken," suffering a concussion, later waking up with *lo** all over her. Fell said only 3-4 people knew. Jacobson, upon returning to the station, said he went to her house "to cut her hair off ... she was a she-man."