AUGUSTA — When Richmond Country Superior Court Judge Duncan Wheale entered his chamber Sept. 11 to hear oral arguments for a transgendered woman who spent two years seeking a legal name change, the first thing he did was introduce himself to her.

“You should be encouraged that I’m calling you Vickee,” Wheale said.

Ben Douglas Gatliff, now legally named Victoria “Vickee” Jeane Gatliff, first filed for a name change in January 2001. But the request saw no action for two years because Gatliff’s original attorneys did not present all the requested information, Wheale said at the hearing.

But last week, Wheale ended the wait by granting Gatliff’s name change after he reviewed a criminal background check and evidence from doctors explaining that transgendered people must live full-time in their new gender for one year prior to gender reassignment surgery.

“You are now Vickee,” Wheale said as the hearing wrapped up.

For Gatliff and her partner, Sheree Gatliff, the long-awaited name change proved both gratifying and frustrating.

“I think the whole thing was ridiculous,” Sheree Gatliff said. “It’s been over two years for a name change.”

“It’s just a step in a long transition for me,” Vickee Gatliff said. “I’m very pleased.”

Gatliff plans to have gender reassignment surgery in 2005, she said.

Prior to the hearing last week’s hearing, Wheale said he refused to sign the name change order until Gatliff received gender reassignment surgery because he had not been provided a criminal background check or proof from doctors that Gatliff needed the name change prior to the surgery.

“My concern is if a man who has not had a sex change, and he is a sex pervert or a pedophile and gets new ID and goes and dresses up like a woman and goes into the bathroom and watches little girls go to the bathroom and changing clothes, I have a problem with that,” Wheale said in a May interview with Southern Voice.

But Wheale reversed course after receiving the information from Greg Nevins, an attorney for Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund’s office in Atlanta.

Living as a woman, but still having a male name, Gatliff faced difficulties when writing checks, presenting credit cards, or using her driver’s license as identification, according to Nevins.

“We explained the process of transitioning and that transgendered people should be treated no differently,” Nevins said after the hearing.

Lambda Legal picked up the case in May after Gatliff’s original attorneys, Cecilia Toole and Chris Nicholson, failed to obtain the name change for more than two years.

Toole and Nicholson first requested the change in January 2001, but dropped that request and filed a new request in January 2003, in an attempt to side-step Wheale, which Gatliff said led her to believe that the judge dismissed her name change petition out of transgender bias.

“I feel like I’ve been beaten up, raped and left on the side of the road by a bigot who usurps his authority to discriminate against me for his personal beliefs and not the law his is sworn to uphold,” Gatliff told Southern Voice in an article published May 23.

At last week’s hearing, Wheale responded to the Southern Voice coverage.

“I am not a bigot,” Wheale said. “I’ve worked all my life to prove I am not a bigot.”

Wheale added that a favorite workout partners is an openly gay man.

“Cases shouldn’t spiral out of control like this,” Wheale said after commending Nevins for his work on the case.

Nevins “has satisfied me that you have a genuine interest in becoming a woman,” Wheale told Gatliff.

The designated gender on Gatliff’s birth certificate is to remain male until after the gender reassignment surgery, but other identification can be changed, Wheale ruled.