Daphne Dorman, trans woman, was bullied to death for defending Dave Chappelle

The trans woman who Dave Chappelle said was hounded to death in his controversial Netflix show had defended the funnyman during a previous attack from the trans community.

Daphne Dorman was 44 when she killed herself in 2019 after defending Chappelle for jokes made during a Netflix special that year. 

‘When she did that, the trans community dragged that b**** through Twitter,' Chappelle told the audience in The Closer, his latest standup act on Netflix that has had many critics calling for him to be cancelled.

'For days, they was going in on her and she was on her own because she’s funny,' he continued, hinting the harassment might have contributed to her suicide.

‘It’s a true story; my heart was broken. I don’t know what was going on, but I’ll bet dragging her didn’t help.’

Dorman, who began transitioning to a woman in 2014, was an up-and-coming comedian who opened a show for Chappelle.  

Her humor veiled a dark past mired by a troubled childhood that left her with severe PTSD, her family said. 

But despite her inner demons, she tapped into her comedy to make the world around her laugh, her sister said.

'Just from the word "go" she was always very funny,'  Becky Kugler told DailyMail.com. 'She could make the sentence, "The dog took a crap" hysterically funny. It's just the way she can use her descriptive words and how she worded things.' 

Dorman drew criticism after defending Chappelle's show Sticks and Stones, which took jabs at gay and trans people, with tweet on August 28, 2019.

‘Punching down requires you to consider yourself superior to another group,’ she tweeted. ‘@DaveChappelle doesn’t consider himself better than me in any way. He isn’t punching up or punching down.

‘He’s punching lines. That’s his job and he’s a master of his craft.’

Dorman was born William Richard Brown Jr. on April 30 1975, and had a ‘very traumatic childhood’ growing up in Pennsylvania, said Kugler.

She declined to elaborate on those troubled years, except to say they left the siblings with extreme post-traumatic stress disorder that Dorman struggled to cope with.

She seemed ‘very sad’ during their last text exchange, Kugler said.

Dorman posted a note on Facebook October 11, 2019, before taking her own life that day.

‘I'm sorry,’ she wrote. ‘I've thought about this a lot before this morning. How do you say "goodbye" and "I'm sorry" and "I love you" to all the beautiful souls you know? For the last time.

‘There's no good way. That's what I got out of all that thought.

‘To those of you who are mad at me: please forgive me. To those of you who wonder if you failed me: you didn't. To those of you feel like I failed you: I did and I'm sorry and I hope you'll remember me in better times and better light.’ 

Chappelle’s transgender jokes on The Closer have drawn the ire of the LGBQT  community, but Dorman's sisters brushed off the critics.

Kugler said Dorman likely would have found some of his material funny, and that she wouldn’t have taken offense at his comedic fodder.

‘In her mind, he wasn’t giving (the LBGQT community) lack of support, nor was he giving them support. He was making jokes because that’s what comedians do,’ Kugler told DailyMail.com. ‘In her opinion, you make jokes about everything.’

Dorman's other sibling, Brandy, told The Daily Beast: 'Dave loved my sister and is an LGBTQ ally.'