View Full Version : Hate Crimes
I am not sure if this is the correct forum for this topic.
I know it can be depressing to just list hate crimes that are committed against our community and humanity as a whole.
I just think that sharing sometimes might raise awareness that our (for some) safe bubble isn't so safe for some.
I would like to start off with this story. Daniel (Stearns) showed me this and my heart just breaks.
Lesbian couple in Vonore says house fire is hate crime (http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=13134384)
i think things will get worse for us.
i think things will get worse for us.
care to expand?
There seems to be an increasing fervor in the US around race, nationality, religion, orientation and gender - and it's being preached on the tv and from the pulpits. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently stated that since Obama became president, there has been a significant increase in the amount of hate groups. People are poor and fearful and angry, and many embrace an apocalyptic end-of-days fundamentalist Christianity that really stokes the fires of hopelessness and blame. I had a sweet, funny lady at work tell me in all sincerity the other day that she was reading the "Left Behind" series, and it's really sad how many people are going to be tortured here on earth for 7 years before descending into hell just because they refused to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I said, "Sounds like a merciful god," and she replied, "They all had plenty of chances to save themselves."
If we win any of our rights battles, I think there definitely will be more violent backlash.
Thanks for this thread.
Quite honestly, I feel less safe now than I did say nearly 40 years ago. Times they are a changin, but at this very moment it doesn't feel very safe out there to me....
Just sayin.
Rapper 50 Cent Jokes About ‘Shooting Up’ Gay Wedding (http://biggaynews.com/rapper-50-cent-jokes-about-shooting-up-gay-wedding/5956)
Rapper 50 Cent made a joke about violence against gays in his Twitter feed on September 6, in response to an insult made by Perez Hilton. As reported by AfterElton and Queerty, after Hilton referred to him as a “douchebag,” 50 Cent responded on Twitter, saying: “Perez Hilton calld me douchebag so I had my homie shoot up a gay wedding. wasnt his but still made me feel better. “ The tweet was accompanied by a photo of two men in suits running from an angry mob.
Seattle Police Investigate Transgender Attack (http://biggaynews.com/seattle-police-investigate-transgender-attack/5939)
here's the police report (http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/library/PoliceReport-2010306882_cap_hill.pdf)
FBI Says Marines Won’t Be Charged with Hate Crime (http://biggaynews.com/fbi-says-marines-wont-be-charged-with-hate-crime/5874)
Two U.S. Marines accused of knocking a gay Savannah man unconscious will face only misdemeanor charges in the attack after the Justice Department declined to prosecute them for hate crimes, authorities said Wednesday. Savannah-Chatham County police arrested the Marines on June 12 after finding 27-year-old Kieran Daly unconscious on a downtown sidewalk. Witnesses said the Marines got upset because they thought Daly winked at them and attacked him as he tried to walk away. The FBI launched a preliminary investigation into whether the attack warranted charges as a federal hate crime. Stephen Emmett, spokesman for the FBI in Atlanta, said Wednesday the Justice Department opted against pursuing hate-crime charges after reviewing the case. “The matter now rests with local authorities,” Emmett said.
Atlanta sees 17 anti-gay bias crimes this year (http://www.projectqatlanta.com/news_articles/view/atlanta_sees_17_anti-gay_bias_crimes_this_year?gid=6300)
According to records provided by the Atlanta Police Department, the attack in Piedmont Park is one of 17 incidents to have taken place so far this year that’s been categorized as bias-related specifically against members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered, or LGBT, community. Because Georgia has the dubious distinction of being one of just five states without hate crime legislation on the books, when a victim of crime is targeted based on their race, color, creed, or sexual orientation or identification, the Atlanta Police Department can classify the act only as a “bias crime.” The phrase doesn’t carry quite the same gravitas as “hate crime,” nor is it accompanied by the same threat of additional penalty in the state’s court system. Classifying crimes as bias-related basically allows the APD to keep stats on the phenomenon and gives police the option of forwarding the case to the Justice Department for prosecution under federal hate crimes legislation, should it meet certain requirements.
States that have no hate crimes laws:
Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Wyoming
States that have hate crimes laws that cover neither sexual orientation nor gender identity:
Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina
States that have hate crimes laws that cover sexual orientation but not gender identity:
Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine,
Massachusetts, Michigan (2002-data collection only), Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin
States that have hate crimes laws addressing sexual orientation and gender identity:
California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Vermont
SuperFemme
09-17-2010, 01:00 PM
Denny’s employee stabbed in alleged hate crime
A Santa Maria man was arrested early Thursday morning on charges of attempted murder and committing a hate crime after an employee at a Denny’s Restaurant was stabbed in the neck and throat.
Police responding to the call of battery at 3:28 a.m. found the victim, an adult man in his 30s, outside the restaurant at 1019 E. Main St. with a laceration to the side of his throat. He also had been stabbed in the side of his neck. The man was specifically targeted by 24-year-old Curtis Martin because of his perceived sexual orientation, police said.
The victim was transported to Marian Medical Center by ambulance for treatment.
“The injuries were not life-threatening and he’s expected to fully recover,” said Santa Maria police Lt. Dan Ast, noting that the knife did not pierce any vital body parts.
Ast said that Martin knocked on the window of the restaurant, which was closed, and asked to use the restroom. He was let in and approached a group of Denny’s employees sitting at a table. Martin asked the victim, a waiter, if he was gay and when the victim replied that he was, he was attacked, according to Ast.
Martin used a knife he had brought with him, Ast said.
After the assault, Martin ran to his vehicle and was seen fleeing the scene westbound on Main Street, police said. His vehicle was located a short time later and Martin was arrested and booked into county jail
http://www.santamariatimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_386f7be6-c225-11df-9473-001cc4c002e0.html
miss entycing
09-17-2010, 01:15 PM
[QUOTE=Nat;189858]States that have no hate crimes laws:
Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Wyoming
sadly, I'm here in SC.
I've had my car trashed because of my sticker, had tires slashed,
been in a semi brawl with an ex (Hy took most of the brunt) while walking thru a flea market one saturday-
simply because my ex had the 'nerve' to place Hys hand on the small of my back to guide me thru the crowd.
2 guys started running their mouths, following us, and cornered us in the parking lot. Someone gratefully called the police,
although not before my ex got slammed up against our car after swinging on the guy who tried to grab my chest.
It was awful, and it scared me... I mean really scared me.
There are still active laws here in SC that state we can go to jail for same sex public affection-
I kid you not :blink:
A few years ago here in Greenville, there were so many attacks here in a certain part of one city park-
nobody ever seemed to care that gay men were being bashed and killed.
Edited to add.... that same park has now been re vamped and is all part of the 'trendy' downtown redevelopment.
and the gay bar that's been here for years upon years STILL has Greenville County PD posted there during business hours
it's sickening, and scary.
scary indeed, do I feel safe? If Damon is with me, then yes- but then again, that's also the time when we BOTH could be in danger. :sigh:
Stonewall Attack: Two Staten Island Men Arrested For Gay Hate Crime At Stonewall Inn (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/matthew-francis-christoph_n_749926.html)
chefhottie25
10-05-2010, 12:32 PM
I live in toledo, ohio. I have lived in several other states, like atlanta, chicago, raleigh and new paltz new york. I have always felt safe in all the places that I have lived. I have never been attacked, threatened, or taunted for being a boi. I do live in a bubble. The recent attacks on gays and the stories in this thread have opened my eyes to the hatred and ignorance that exsists in this country. It makes me sad and angry. I was wondering if anyone knows of any activist groups or planned protests that are trying to educate the masses. I haven't been part of any type of activism since college. I would love to hear about what some of you are doing. It's time for me to leave my bubble.
Cyclopea
10-06-2010, 01:36 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-burleigh/a-holy-war-on-women_b_721173.html
Nina Burleigh
Posted: September 17, 2010 01:21 PM
A Holy War on Women
If anyone still doubted, or hadn't noticed, that misogyny is the fundamental pillar on which radical Islam is based, the news that poison gas was pumped into girls' schools in Afghanistan, likely by the Taliban, ought to confirm it.
The story, first reported in the U.S. in the New York Times two weeks ago, goes like this: For the last two years, girls and women in certain schools around Afghanistan have been turning up sickened by fumes in their schools. At first, authorities disregarded the reports, chalking them up to female hysteria due to nervousness over outright attacks on girls schools by murderous Taliban enforcers.
Then the U.N. went in and tested their blood, and voila -- it appears the Taliban, taking a page out of the Nazi playbook, has been pumping stuff like Zyklon B, the notorious Holocaust gas, into girls' schools, to further their goal of keeping their females illiterate. (A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility.)
This horrific story is only one of many pieces of evidence that should make it ever more obvious to the world that subjugating females is the driving force behind Islamist rage. It was there in 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atef's will, in which he demanded that no pregnant woman be allowed to come near his grave; it's there in the acid attacks on pretty girls who dare say no to their men in Pakistan; it's there in the stoning sentences in Iran and Somalia, it's there in the prohibition on women driving cars in Saudi Arabia, it's there in the black blankets millions of women think -- know -- they must throw over their heads whenever they dare step outside their homes.
Apparently, in these countries, men fear losing control of their women more than they fear death itself. Jihadists and their supporters are an entire movement afflicted with the syndrome psychologists have identified in garden variety domestic abusers everywhere: men who confuse love and power, and for whom losing their women is so painful that they would rather see them dead. For women affiliated with such men, the most dangerous moment comes when they try to leave. The possible awakening and emancipation of women worldwide has put women in these cultures at grave risk right now.
With so much evidence piled up that the status of women in the West is what radical Islamist fighters revile most about us, the only question left is why haven't the Western countries made support of women a fundamental element of the diplomatic, military and political response? Where is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on this subject? Where is President Obama?
For years, our governments have treated outrageous depredations against women as quaint cultural customs. Only the French have officially rejected the burka, and for that faced international criticism and drivel about "racism."
Of course womanhood is not a "race," and that's precisely the problem in getting supported. If blacks or Jews were consistently mistreated the way women are from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, and in many of the nations in between, the United Nations, the Europeans and the people of the United States wouldn't stand for it, and our elected representatives would be holding hearings, issuing sanctions, putting the issue front and center every single day.
On the contrary, those on the right who support the "War on Terror" talk about supporting the troops, or about the almost nonexistent threat (since 9/11) of violence on our shores. The practice of wholesale annihilation of females isn't much discussed.
Those on the left who want the troops out of Afghanistan by next week are also missing the point. There is a just and a good reason for our men and women to be over there bravely trying to eradicate the Taliban. It has to do with the fates of millions and millions of women, who face not just lifelong psychological abuse, but actual violence and death among these men.
And if no one stands up to these men and their supporters and enablers in the less warlike quarters of the Islamic world, on that fundamental tenet, here's what happens:
Today, we read that the lunatic American Imam Al-Awlaki has issued a "fatwa" against a Seattle newspaper cartoonist named (not for long) Molly Norris, who has apparently been told to change her name and go into hiding. Now, an American woman joins Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoonist in the long list of individuals the "pure" men in white robes are trying to cow into silence.
It's time for all American women and their elected officials, on the right and the left, to stand up against this nonsense, support free speech and expose and oppose, in the strongest and loudest terms possible, the misogyny that is a tenet of this vile, so-called holy war.
9 accused of torturng 3 in Bronx - Lured Into a Trap, Then Tortured for Being Gay (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/nyregion/09bias.html?_r=1)
(link to video report) (http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Gang_Members_Arrested_For_Brutal_Anti-Gay_Attacks_in_the_Bronx_New_York.html)
He was told there was a party at a brick house on Osborne Place, a quiet block set on a steep hill in the Bronx. He showed up last Sunday night as instructed, with plenty of cans of malt liquor. What he walked into was not a party at all, but a night of torture — he was sodomized, burned and whipped.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/10/09/nyregion/09JPBIAS1CTY/09JPBIAS1CTY-popup.jpg
A gay man was tortured in the house, at left, at 1910 Osborne Place in the Bronx, the police said.
All punishment, the police said Friday, for being gay.
There were nine attackers, ranging from 16 to 23 years old and calling themselves the Latin King Goonies, the police said. Before setting upon their 30-year-old victim, they had snatched up two teenage boys whom they beat, the police said — until the boys — one of whom was sodomized with a plunger — admitted to having had sex with the man.
The attackers forced the man to strip to his underwear and tied him to a chair, the police said. One of the teenage victims was still there, and the “Goonies” ordered him to attack the man. The teenager hit him in the face and burned him with a cigarette on his nipple and penis as the others jeered and shouted gay slurs, the police said. Then the attackers whipped the man with a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.
The beatings and robberies went on for hours. They were followed by a remarkably thorough attempt to sanitize the house — including pouring bleach down drains, the police said, as little by little word of the attacks trickled to the police. A crucial clue to the attackers was provided by someone who slipped a note to a police officer outside the crime scene, at 1910 Osborne Place in Morris Heights, near Bronx Community College.
Seven suspects were arrested on Thursday and Friday, and two were still being sought in a crime that the leader of the City Council called among the worst hate crimes she had ever heard of. “It makes you sick,” said the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, the city’s highest ranking openly gay official.
The charges included abduction, unlawful imprisonment and sodomy, all as hate crimes.
“These suspects deployed terrible, wolf-pack odds of nine against one, which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference.
The assaults are the latest in a string of recent episodes of bullying and attacks against gays. A Rutgers University student jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge last month, prosecutors said, after his roommate had secretly set up a webcam in their room and streamed over the Internet his sexual encounter with another man. Two men were accused of robbing and beating a man in the Stonewall Inn, a landmark gay bar in Greenwich Village, last weekend while shouting slurs.
Neighbors on Osborne Place said the house, nondescript but for its door painted a bright lime green, had been vacant for some time. A group of teenagers and young men had moved in as squatters, neighbors said, and hosted loud parties.
“You could smell it from them,” said a neighbor who gave only his last name, Gomez. “From the start, you could tell they were trouble.” Mr. Gomez said he and other neighbors had discussed whether anything could be done about the squatters, but nothing came of it.
The nine suspects — the group seemed not so much part of an established gang as a loose group of friends who adopted a nickname — knew some or all three victims. The idea for the attacks seemed to have been hatched last Saturday, after one member of the group saw the 30-year-old man, who he knew was gay, with a 17-year-old who wanted to join the gang, the police said.
Hours later, at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, the group grabbed the 17-year-old, took him to the house and slammed him into a wall, the police said.
He was beaten, made to strip naked, slashed with a box cutter, hit on the head with a can of beer and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the police said. And he was interrogated about the 30-year-old and asked if they had had sex.
The teenager said that they had. The gang members set him loose, warning him to keep quiet or they would hurt his friends and family. The teenager walked into a nearby hospital and said he had been jumped by strangers on the street and robbed.
At 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, the police said, the group members grabbed a second 17-year-old, beating and likewise interrogating him about his contact with the 30-year-old. He, too, said he had had sex with the man. They took his jewelry and held him while the 30-year-old arrived for what he thought was a party, his arms filled with 10 tall cans of Four Loko, a caffeine-infused malt liquor. He had cleaned out a store of its entire stock.
He was immediately set upon and tied up. Then the assailants ordered the second teenager to attack the 30-year-old, and they joined in the beating. The beating lasted hours, the police said. The attackers forced the man to drink all 10 cans of liquor — each about twice the size of a can of beer, with a higher alcohol content, 10 percent to 12 percent, according to Four Loko’s Web site.
While the man was held captive and attacked, five of the Latin King Goonies went to his house, which he shared with his 40-year-old brother. Using a key taken from the 30-year-old to get inside, they found his brother in bed. They pulled a blanket over his head and hit him, demanding money. When he refused, one placed a cellphone to the brother’s ear, and he heard the voice of his younger brother, who said he had been kidnapped and who pleaded, “Give them the money.”
The brother complied. The men took $1,000 in cash, two debit cards and a 52-inch television.
The brother managed to free himself about three hours later, and he called the police, leaving out the fact that his brother was being held. By then it was Monday morning. Detectives went to the brothers’ home and, upon leaving, saw the 30-year-old, passed out on the landing from the alcohol he had consumed. But having no reason to believe he had been a victim of a crime, they did not question him.
Detectives returned later that day, suspicious of how the robbers had entered the brothers’ home without using force, and the 30-year-old told them he had been picked up in a van by strangers and forced to give them his keys and address, the police said.
Officers still had no idea about the first teen who had visited the hospital, because he had not called the police, and hospitals are not required to inform the authorities about assaults, the police said. The man had said he was robbed near 1910 Osborne, and police officers tried to obtain a search warrant for the house but were told they did not have enough cause, the police said.
Late on Tuesday the second teenager walked into a Bronx police station house and gave a version of what had happened, the police said. None of the three victims, in their first interviews with the police, were fully forthcoming, fearing reprisal and wanting to keep their lives a secret. But the second teenager gave an address, and a second request for a search warrant was granted.
On Wednesday morning, officers entered 1910 Osborne Place and found a surprising sight: an immaculate house, with fresh coats of paint and the smell of bleach hanging thick in the air. One detective called the house “the cleanest crime scene I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Kelly said.
“Lots of bleach and paint were used to cover the blood shed by their tortured prey,” he said. “They even poured bleach down the drains.”
Rugs and linoleum had been ripped out. Detectives were able to scrape evidence, including pubic hair and empty liquor cans, from the house, but not much was found, Mr. Kelly said.
The break in the case came later Wednesday when someone in a crowd of onlookers outside the house quietly slipped an officer his phone number and, when a detective called, gave the name of the man believed to be the ringleader of the group of nine: Ildefonzo Mendez, 23. Officers later learned the name of the first victim from the other teenager.
By Wednesday night, all three victims had given full accounts of the attacks, and for the next 36 hours, officers with the Hate Crimes Task Force, the Gang Division and Special Victims squad worked up a list of nine suspects.
Arrests began Thursday.
The other suspects under arrest were identified as David Rivera, 21; Nelson Falu, 18; Steven Carballo, 17; Denis Peitars, 17; Bryan Almonte, 17; and Brian Cepeda, 16. They were being held by the police in the Bronx on Friday night, with no arraignment scheduled. Still being sought, the police said, are Elmer Confessor, 23, and Ruddy Vargas-Perez, 22.
One suspect confessed, a law enforcement official said, others have not given statements.
Gemme
10-09-2010, 02:39 AM
I'm speechless.
Miss Scarlett
10-09-2010, 07:41 AM
Thanks for posting that story Nat. Below is the version from NPR.
(Bleach interferes with the chemicals used to detect the presence of blood, i.e. Luminol, etc. Fortunately it leaves a distinct smell in the air.)
Is it me - do these things seem to be on the rise or is it just being reported more?
I am getting tired of people thinking it is OK to attack us because of who we are.
NYPD: 7 In Gang Attacked Gay Recruit, 2 Others
by The Associated Press
October 8, 2010
Members of a street gang discovered one of their recruits was gay, so they attacked the teen, brutally beating and torturing him and two other people in gruesome assaults, police said Friday.
Seven of the suspects were arrested and being held pending arraignment on charges of robbery, sodomy, menacing and assault as hate crimes. Two others were being sought. The attack came amid heightened attention to anti-gay bullying following a string of suicides attributed to it last month around the country.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the first of the four assaults in the most recent case occurred at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday.
The first victim, a 17-year-old potential recruit for the "Latin King Goonies" street gang, was grabbed by gang members and taken to an empty Bronx apartment they used for parties and sex, police said. The teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a wooden plunger handle, police said.
The attackers, apparently angry he was gay, yelled anti-gay insults and questioned him about his contact with a 30-year-old man, police said.
The teen was eventually released and told not to tell anyone. He walked to a hospital where he was treated, but he reported his injuries as due to a robbery.
Using information gleaned from their interrogation of the recruit, the attackers then descended on another 17-year-old also thought to have had a relationship with the 30-year-old, police said. Both were lured to the same apartment.
The second teen was assaulted at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, police said. The 30-year-old arrived about an hour later with malt liquor, thinking he was going to a party. He was stripped to his underwear and tied to a chair opposite the other teen, who was forced by the angry mob to burn the man with cigarettes, police said. They beat the 30-year-old, forced him to drink copious amounts of the malt liquor he brought, and sodomized him with a small baseball bat, police said.
"These suspects employed terrible wolf-pack odds of nine-against-one, odds which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable," Kelly said.
During the attack, some of the assailants went to the 30-year-old's home, where they attacked his older brother and robbed him of $1,000, a 52-inch TV and two debit cards, police said.
The victims were eventually freed, hospitalized and treated. The assailants scrubbed the scene top-to-bottom with bleach, even repainting the walls to make it look new, police said.
"They could clean, but they couldn't hide," Kelly said.
Investigators said they still found alcohol cans and hair at the scene. And an onlooker slipped a phone number to detectives, leading them to the primary suspect. The victims, initially reluctant, also started to divulge more details about the assaults, Kelly said. The Hate Crimes Task Force took over the investigation, along with Bronx robbery and gang division and special victims squad and arrested the seven men.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the city's highest-ranking openly gay official, called the attacks "vile" and "horrifying."
"These attacks are appalling and are even more despicable because the victims were clearly targeted in acts of hate simply because they are gay," Quinn said. "The cowardly few who committed these crimes do not represent New Yorkers and our community will not be cowed by such violence."
A weekend rally on anti-gay bias was planned following other crimes against gays.
On Sunday, a patron at the Stonewall Inn, a symbol of the gay rights movement since protests over a 1969 police raid there, was beaten in an anti-gay bias attack, according to prosecutors. Two suspects in the case were charged. Their attorneys say they're not guilty.
That attack followed the Sept. 22 death of a New Jersey college student, who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his sexual encounter with a man in his dorm room was secretly streamed online. The student's roommate and another freshman have been charged with invasion of privacy. Authorities are considering bias-crime charges.
The attacks remain all too common, and there is still a stigma to being a lesbian, gay bisexual or trangendered person, said Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, which works to combat attacks on gays and others. That stigma leads to such attacks, and to young people feeling their only alternative is suicide.
"We have to stop thinking that it's OK to bully LGBT people, or make fun of LGBT people," she said. "What we see now is the link between casual sort of comments and the real and horrific violence that results because those comments contribute to an entire culture of violence."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130446268&ps=cprs
Hate Crime Suspected at East Carolina University (http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/10/16/Hate_Crime_Suspected_at_East_Carolina_University//)
According to the Daily Reflector, assistant ECU police chief Dawn Tevepaugh said police arrested an 18-year-old male ECU student and are seeking another man in connection with the assault at the Greenville, North Carolina campus. The two women, ages 18 and 19, are not students at the school.
“Officers arrested Tyler Hall resident Bryan Berg, 18, and charged him with assault on a female after he allegedly punched one of the women in the jaw,” reported the Reflector. “They are searching for a second man who was identified and have questioned a third man as a witness, Tevepaugh said.
“Officers are continuing their investigation to determine whether the assault should be characterized as a hate crime because of the perceived sexual orientation of the women, Tevepaugh said. Comments also might have been made to them precipitating the reported assault, she said.”
The women were exiting a dorm around 2:15 a.m. when they were assaulted by at least two men, the Reflector reported.
http://www.advocate.com/uploadedImages/ADVOCATE/NEWS/2010/2010-10/2010-10-16/BryanBergx180.jpg
Miss Scarlett
10-17-2010, 05:36 PM
Thanks for posting that story Nat. Here's some more from our local LGBT paper Q-Notes.
Possible hate crime investigated at East Carolina
Eighteen-year-old arrested in campus assault on two women
by Matt Comer October 16, 2010
GREENVILLE, N.C. — Police have arrested one man in connection with a potential anti-gay hate crime and assault on two women on the campus of East Carolina University (ECU). Investigators are also looking for a second man they think was involved in the incident, which occurred early Friday morning outside of a campus dormitory.
Two women, 18 and 19 years old, were exiting the dorm when a group of men allegedly began hurling anti-gay slurs at them. One woman was spat on when she confronted the group and was later hit by Bryan Berg, 18. Berg was arrested for assault on a female. He’s been released under a $27,000 bond.
Both women were treated at Pitt County Memorial Hospital. One was released, but the other remains hospitalized after suffering a broken jaw.
“We have to look at all the elements of the incident to see if they meet the federal requirements to be classified as a hate crime, including what was said and the actions that occurred. At this time, we believe it was an isolated incident,” Assistant ECU Police Chief Dawn Tevepaugh told The Daily Reflector.
Aaron Lucier, director of ECU’s LGBT Union, told the daily paper he’s confident police will conduct a fair investigation.
“Hate crime or not, it was a violent act, something we don’t want on our campus,” Lucier said. “We have a campus here that celebrates diversity on all levels. Our students find an educational campus here that is welcoming, but also learning, so it is a space that our students will find supportive and welcoming.”
http://goqnotes.com/8892/possible-hate-crime-investigated-at-east-carolina/
MsTinkerbelly
10-29-2010, 12:57 PM
Noose Hung At Equality California
Workers arrived at the Santa Ana office of Equality California to find a small string noose hanging from the door. Local police were uninterested. EQCA employee Mel Distel relates her exchange with the cop who responded to her call:
"There was nothing they could do, of course, there was no suspect and no crime had been committed. The officer said 'what it is, is a string on a door.' My vision got blurry, I was embarrased and felt stupid for making the call. I took a deep breath and said 'Do you see any correlation between the fact that this is a gay office and there was a noose left on our door in the wake of all of these teen suicides?' The officer said, 'Sometimes you just have to live with being a victim,' and proceeded to mention that his car had been broken into before." That didn't exactly sit well with Distel. "As if that's the same. As if having your stereo stolen is anything like the message 'You should kill yourself.' As if random theft is anything like an act meant to convey hate and stir up fear in the heart of a minority group."
Making threats of violence against an LGBT group is considered a hate crime in California, despite the officer's indifference.
Swastika-Shaving Case To Be First Test Of New Hate Crimes Law Named For Matthew Shepard (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/29/swastika-shaving-hate-crimes-matthew-shepard_n_789472.html)
xWdu67VHjW4&feature=player_embedded#!
Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/africa/28uganda.html?src=me&ref=general)
Andrew, Jr.
01-28-2011, 07:13 PM
I am with TD. I don't feel safe at all. Not in this day and age.
Teens Beat Up Williamsburg man in Gay Hate Crime (http://brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/11/wb_bariewythe_2011_3_18_bk.html?comm=1)
Man, 70, Stoned to Death for Homosexuality: Police
Suspect said the Old Testament told him that homosexuals must be stoned, police say (Philadelphia) (http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Man-70-Stoned-to-Death-for-Homosexuality-Police-118243719.html)
Wow! Touching stories, to think there is that much hatred in the world.
I know of an even recently that really disturbed me
One of my friends room mates was walking her dog with her sister, she had a backpack on that had a rainbow flag decal on it. Some guys in a car decided to drive up on the sidewalk and grab her backpack and drag her almost a mile before letting her go, and before he let her go he yelled the F word at her. She slid another 5-10 feet before hitting a pole. Luckily she survived with only road rash on her backside and back, and a big gash in her forehead, and she received a concussion.
Luckily there was an ex Marine standing in his front yard taking out the garbage, he got the license plate of the car that dragged her. And the cops are now trying to find the people responsible for it.
Rutgers Videospying Suspect Indicted for Trying to Destroy Evidence (http://abcnews.go.com/US/rutgers-videotaping-suspect-charged-tampering-evidence/story?id=13417864)
Hate crime charges in Md. McDonald's beating (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VIDEOTAPED_BEATING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-16-15-56-57)
EnderD_503
05-17-2011, 10:41 AM
Hate crime charges in Md. McDonald's beating (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VIDEOTAPED_BEATING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-16-15-56-57)
I didn't see it mentioned in the article or elsewhere, but do you know what the hate crime charges were for? Maryland still doesn't include gender identity/expression in hate crime laws, and I know they were talking about falsely using race or sexual orientation as a grounds for hate crime charges. Did they actually recognise that this hate crime against Polis was because she was transgender, instead of falsely fitting it under sexual orientation or race?
EnderD_503
05-19-2011, 07:09 PM
According to a few news sources I've been looking at, it seems that the hate crime charges against Polis' attackers were stuffed under sexual orientation. If shit like this continues to pass unchecked it doesn't really help things. People already confuse gender identity with sexual orientation far too much, and when even those involved in the case think it's an issue of sexual orientation then we're in trouble.
An older news report:
http://www.wbaltv.com/video/27666582/detail.html
Mississippi prosecutor says video turns hit-and-run case to hate crime (http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/blogs/lookout/mississippi-prosecutor-says-video-turns-hit-run-case-133347823.html)
"Smith says the video shows a group of white teens beating black auto worker James Craig Anderson in a parking lot, before one of the teens gets into a pick-up truck and intentionally runs him down. A motel worker said one of the teens yelled "white power" during the beating, and Smith says the group drove from the mostly white Rankin County to Jackson solely in order to find a black person to assault."
This video does start with a warning about graphic footage. I didn't watch the video footage, but the interviews/reporting better illustrate the awfulness of this. Like, these kids went to mcdonalds afterwards.
F0ZXbpTNb6A
Stuart Walker, gay bartender in Scotland, beaten and burned alive
ZsLrGGSe-qo
http://www.towleroad.com/2011/10/teen-arrested-in-connection-with-murder-of-gay-scottish-barman-stuart-walker.html
Teen Arrested in Connection with Murder of Gay Scottish Barman Stuart Walker
A teenager has been arrested in connection with the murder of gay Scottish barman Stuart Walker. Walker's body was found beaten and burned in a rural area outside Cumnock in Ayrshire in Scotland early on Saturday after spending a night out with friends.
STV reports:
Strathclyde Police confirmed the man was taken into custody on Thursday evening, less than a week after Mr Walker's body was discovered at an industrial estate in Cumnock, Ayrshire.
A police spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that an 18-year-old man is currently detained in connection with this inquiry."
No further details have been offered.
Divisional Commander John Thomson of the Strathclyde Police said earlier this week that the victim’s lifestyle was the "main focus" of his inquiries: "I don’t think it was a random attack by someone who will strike again. I suspect Stuart may have known this individual or met this individual shortly before his death."
UPDATE: Those allegations that Walker was facing an indecency probe were reportedly made by a malicious liar. "But the Record can reveal the man who made the allegation was a 44-year-old with a long criminal record including rape, assault, car theft and housebreaking. And prosecutors planned to throw out the case. The man who lodged the complaint cannot be named because it would identify his son, the subject of the allegation."
The Boston Herald spotlights a fascinating criminal case today: Last Sunday, Erika Stroud, 21, her sister Felicia Stroud, 18, and a third woman, Lydia Sanford, attacked a gay man in a stairwell of a Boston subway station viciously enough to break his nose.
Prosecutor Lindsey Weinstein said they repeatedly punched and kicked him "after he bumped them with his backpack." As they beat him, they also "called him insulting homophobic slurs," according to the victim's account, and he told police he believed he was attacked because of his sexual orientation.
They were swiftly arraigned yesterday on hate crime charges. But here's the thing: All three identify as lesbians. It's a legal conundrum: Do hate crime laws apply to members of the minorities they seek to protect?
City prosecutors and the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU think they do, and are pursuing a charge of assault and battery with intent to intimidate -- a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.
“Someone who is Jewish can be anti-Semitic,” said ACLU staff attorney Sarah Wunsch. “The mere fact that someone is a member of the same class doesn’t mean they could not be motivated by hatred for their very own group.” [...]
“The defendants’ particular orientation or alleged orientations have no bearing on our ability to prosecute for allegedly targeting a person who they believe to be different from them,” [Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley] said.
But not everyone sees it that way:
“My guess is that no sane jury would convict them under those circumstances, but what this really demonstrates is the idiocy of the hate-crime legislation,” said civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate. “If you beat someone up, you’re guilty of assault and battery of a human being. Period. The idea of trying to break down human beings into categories is doomed to failure.”
Hate crime laws as we now know them were born on October 29, 2009, when President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded the definition of a hate crime to include "crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability." But they have been frequently challenged by the same people they seek to protect, who see the legislation as an increase in power of the penal system, there to make politicians look like heroes without doing anything to actually target the roots of the problem. And all too often, the problems begin in government policy itself. Blackandpink.org has a great compilation of arguments against hate crime legislation.
The three women are POC in this case. Dont know about the man they allegedly attacked.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/02/are-lesbian-gay-bashers-guilty-hate-crime/49164/
================================================== ====
from blackandpink.org
A Compilation of Critiques on Hate Crimes Legislation
Many liberal, and even self-proclaimed progressive, organizations are fighting for “hate crimes” legislation nationally and state-by-state. The Senate just voted in favor of the “Matthew Shepard Bill”. Challenges and critiques are made over and over again by queer/trans/gender non-conforming folks, people of color, low-income/poor folks, and others most impacted by the many tentacles of the prison industrial complex, yet the campaigns continue on.
This document is intended to be a bullet point compilation of materials put out by the following organizations (in no particular order): Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE, Queers for Economic Justice, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, Denver Chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Denver on Fire, and the article “Sanesha Stewart, Lawrence King, and why hate crimes legislation won’t help” by jack. The intention behind this document is to present a somewhat simplified critique that can inspire a desire for more information.
If a particular crime is deemed a hate crime by the state, the supposed perpetrator is automatically subject to a higher mandatory minimum sentence. For example, a crime that would carry a sentence of five years can be “enhanced” to eight years.
Plain and simple, hate crimes legislation increases the power and strength of the prison system by detaining more people for longer periods of time.
Trans people, people of color, and other marginalized groups are disproportionately incarcerated to an overwhelming degree. Trans and gender non-conforming people, particularly trans women of color, are regularly profiled and falsely arrested for doing nothing more than walking down the street.
If we are incarcerating those who commit violence against marginalized individuals/communities we then place them behind walls where they can continue to target these same people. It is not in the best interest of marginalized communities to depend on a system that already commits such great violence to then protect them.
Hate crime laws do not distinguish between oppressed groups and groups with social and institutional power.
This reality of the state makes it so that white people can accuse people of color of anti-white hate crimes, straight people accuse queers, and so on. Such a reality opens the door for marginalized people to be prosecuted for simply defending themselves against oppressive violence. This type of precedent setting also legitimizes ideologies of reverse racism that continuously deny the institutionalization of oppression.
Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities’ side while continuing to discriminate against us. Liberal politicians and institutions can claim “anti-oppression” legitimacy and win points with communities affected by prejudice, while simultaneously using “sentencing enhancement” to justify building more prisons to lock us up in.
Hate crimes legislation is a liberal way of being “tough on crime” while building the power of the police, prosecutors, and prison guards. Rather than address systems of violence like health care disparities, economic exploitation, housing crisis, or police brutality, these politicians use hate-crimes legislation as their stamp of approval on “social issues”.
Hate crimes laws focus on punishing the “perpetrator” and has no emphasis on providing support for the survivor or families and friends of those killed during an act of interpersonal hate violence.
We will only strengthen our communities if we take time to care for those who have experienced or been witness to violence. We have to survive systems of violence all the time and are incredibly resilient. We must focus on building our capacity to respond and support survivors and create transformative justice practices that can also heal the perpetrator (though focusing first and foremost on survivors).
Hate crime law sets up the State as protector, intending to deflect our attention from the violence it perpetrates, deploys, and sanctions. The government, its agents, and their institutions perpetuate systemic violence and set themselves up as the only avenue in which justice can be allocated; they will never be charged with hate crimes.
The state, which polices gender, race, sexuality, and other aspects of identity, is able to dismiss the ways it creates the systems that builds a culture of violence against marginalized communities as it pays prosecutors to go after individuals who commit particular types of interpersonal violence. Hate crimes legislation puts marginalized communities in the place of asking the state to play the savior while it continues to perpetuate violence.
Hate crimes don’t occur because there aren’t enough laws against them, and hate crimes won’t stop when those laws are in place. Hate crimes occur because, time and time again, our society demonstrates that certain people are worth less than others; that certain people are wrong, are perverse, are immoral in their very being.
Creating more laws will not help our communities. Organizing for the passage of these kind of laws simply takes the time and energy out of communities that could instead spend the time creating alternative systems and building communities capable of starting transformative justice processes. Hate crimes bills are a distraction from the vital work necessary for community safety.
Passing hate crimes legislation will not bring back those who have been killed by hateful violence, it will not heal the wounds of the body or spirit, it will not give power to communities who have felt powerless after episodes of violence.
Organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and others take advantage of our pain and suffering to garner support for these pieces of legislation. Advocates in the campaigns for hate crimes legislation tokenize individuals like Sanesha Stewart and Angie Zapata while still pushing forward the white, class privileged, gay and lesbian agenda. To truly honor those we have lost and to honestly heal ourselves we must resist the inclination to turn to the state for legitimation or paternalistic protection; let us use the time to build our communities and care for our selves.
Dallas - Gay couple brutally beaten with baseball bats (http://arklatexhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=239762)
Police said the victims were walking to a corner store at about 2 a.m. when five men in a car pulled up alongside them and shouted anti-gay slurs.
"The language used against the victims indicated they were motivated by the perception that they were gay," said Cece Cobb, CEO of the Resource Center of Dallas, one of the primary nonprofit GLBT organizations in North Texas.
Investigators said two of the attackers got out of the car with baseball bats, hitting one of the victims at least four times in the head and knocking him unconscious for a short time.
The other victim tried to fight back and got caught in the car's passenger side door as the attackers sped away.
"It makes me very sad, very sad," said a friend of the victims, who asked not to be identified for all of their safety. "I hate it for my friends to be in so much pain."
The friend, who is taking care of the victims, said he had to get eight staples in his head.
The other victim has bruises covering his face and scabs down his arms and legs.
"It was because they were gay," the friend said.
"Hatred and discrimination still exist, and this is an example that unfortunately we live with that in our lives," Cobb said.
Dallas police are looking for a dark, four-door sedan, possibly a Buick, with tinted windows and 24-inch rims.
Because police have classified it as a hate crime, it carries much stiffer penalties.
9/11 hate crime victim's kin become US citizens (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVAtn9S3gVBp-O-7i9nIJR0EmEDQ?docId=722b7aa2ea9a4966ac29eaac1f9590 19)
WEST WINDSOR, N.J. (AP) — Anum Hasan has seen many conflicting visions of America: the hope of a better life that brought her family from Pakistan, the hate-filled act that ended her father's life in the name of American vengeance; and an outpouring of compassion that her family has come to feel is the true face of the country they now call home.
"I think about what story I'll tell her one day about what happened to our family," Anum Hasan said, cradling her 1-year-old daughter Aisha on her lap. "It's important for her to know there's always a lot of hate going around in the world, but there is so much more good."
Hasan's father, Waqar Hasan, was shot to death four days after Sept. 11, 2001, in Texas, targeted by a white supremacist looking for revenge against Middle Eastern men for the terror attack. The family had every reason to want to leave, but on Friday, Hasan's widow and three of her four daughters were sworn in as U.S. citizens.
It was what happened in the aftermath of Hasan's killing that reinforced the family's decision to remain in the U.S.
The doorbell of their Milltown home did not stop ringing. Letters started pouring in. Hundreds of phone messages from across the country were left with their local congressman, decrying Hasan's killing. Fruit baskets and baked goods were brought to their home. Neighbors in their small town organized a candlelight peace vigil and Waqar Hasan's widow, Durree Hasan, recalled her amazement that the elderly, infirm woman who lived next door had found a way to attend the vigil, despite the pouring rain.
"It never occurred to us we'd have to leave (America). It's home," Durree Hasan said. "We never thought to leave, even to another town. It's a very small town, but like a big family; very supportive."
Durree Hasan, 45, of Milltown, was joined by her three American-born grandchildren clutching small American flags, and her four daughters; Nida, 28, of Mapleshade, Asna, 26 of Edison, Anum, 25, of New York City, and Iqra, 22 of Milltown.
The women wore full Muslim hijab, or headscarves and long garments, and three of the daughters wore niqabs, or traditional Muslim face coverings, as they participated in a moving naturalization ceremony Friday at the New Jersey office of U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, with officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"It was his dream come true today," Usna Hasan said about her father, moment after she was sworn in as an American citizen. "It was his dream that became our dream, and it's an extreme sense of accomplishment, of overwhelming joy and gratitude."
Waqar Hasan was shot in the head and killed on Sept. 15, 2001, as he grilled hamburgers in a Dallas convenience store he had opened that year while Durree remained in New Jersey with the children, working the midnight shift at a factory that makes drinking cups.
White supremacist Mark Anthony Stroman admitted killing the 46-year-old Hasan, thinking he was Arab-American, as part of a series of revenge attacks for 9/11. Stroman was executed last year for the October 2001 killing of an Indian immigrant. He was never tried for Hasan's killing.
Durree Hasan and her daughters faced the threat of deportation as a result of Hasan's death, because their visas were tied to his.
The family, who emigrated legally, had been living in Milltown, in central New Jersey, when Hasan moved to Dallas in 2001 to search for a home and open a convenience store in hopes of eventually relocating the entire family. He had applied for a green card, but the application became invalid when he died.
Holt intervened in 2004 to give them permanent legal residency, introducing a rare "private bill" in Congress that granted the family legal resident status. He hosted the naturalization ceremony Friday and marveled at how the women he'd met a decade ago had grown from teenagers into married, working women with families.
"It's a story of bravery, perseverance and ultimately, I think it's a story of justice and compassion," said the New Jersey Democrat. "Our laws have imperfections, but America continues to strive toward fairness and community and compassion, and that's what you see today."
Stroman, who had a criminal background dating back to his childhood, was put to death in July by lethal injection for the Oct. 4, 2001, killing of Indian immigrant Vasudev Patel at a gas station.
He admitted at the time of his arrest that he shot Hasan and two other South Asian men: "I did what every American wanted to do but didn't. They didn't have the nerve."
He told authorities he belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood when he was arrested in Patel's killing, but said he was not a white supremacist.
"I wanted those Arabs to feel the same sense of vulnerability and uncertainty on American soil much like the mindset of chaos and bedlam that they were already accustomed to in their home country," he said on a website devoted to his case.
During his shooting spree, Stroman also shot and wounded an immigrant from Bangladesh who, despite being blinded in one eye, unsuccessfully sued to stop the execution on the grounds his Muslim beliefs dictated he forgive him. Durree Hasan also sought to get Stroman off death row, officials said.
Holt first lobbied for Hasan to be considered a victim of the 9/11 attacks, but then got a bill passed in 2004 granting the family permanent residency.
They became eligible for citizenship after holding green cards for five years.
Agnes Hernandez, Mexican Transgender Activist, Brutally Murdered (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/agnes-hernandez-hate-crime-mexican-transgender-activist-brutally-murdered_n_1345867.html)
Nearly 2000 individuals congregated outside a civic plaza in Puebla, Mexico on Tuesday, demanding justice for slain Mexican transgender activist Agnés Torres Hernández, whose body was found on Friday by neighbors who reported the crime to local police.
Mexican Attorney General is considering the investigation of Torres' murder as a hate crime, according to the newspaper El Universal (in Spanish).
She was last seen on Friday night when she left her home to attend a party in Chipilo, a small town in the state of Puebla. She was found clothed only in underwear, a blouse with suspenders and a brown jacket on Saturday in a ditch outside the city of Puebla. Her throat had been slashed and there were several burn marks across her body.
Torres, a 28 year-old psychologist and educator, is remembered as an activist and ardent defender of human rights in Mexico's LBGT community. She was an important figure in the strive for acceptance for the transgender community in her native country.
News of her death quickly spread on Twitter under the hashtag #AgnesTorres. Family, friends and members of the LGBT community attended her burial in the city of Tehuacán on Tuesday morning.
Torres’ death adds to a series of violent acts against the LGBT community in Puebla that have been happening since January.
“It's the sixth crime this year against members of the LGBT community and none of them have been resolved," said Brahim Zamora, a representative of the organization "Democracia y Sexualidad" (Demysex) ("Democracy and Sexuality") to CNN Mexico.
The murder case of Jorge Roberto Macip, 47, was also reported this past weekend. His body was found in his own house by his partner. Ninety-five percent of Macip's body was burnt.
These tragic deaths can be attributed to the prejudice that still exists in the country, according to José Ángel Aguilar Gil, national coordinator of Demysex. "It's another homophobic crime," he said to CNN Mexico.
JACKSON -- The case of a white Mississippi teen charged with running down a black man (http://www.sunherald.com/2012/03/16/3823840/hearing-scheduled-in-alleged-hate.html#storylink=cpy) in what authorities have called a hate crime will be the subject of hearing Wednesday.
Deryl Dedmon, 19, is charged with capital murder in the death of James Craig Anderson, 49, who was run over on a Jackson street June 26, 2011, in an act that was captured on a surveillance video from a nearby hotel.
Dedmon’s lawyer, Cynthia Stewart, wouldn’t say Friday what the hearing is about, nor would District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith.
Previous hearings had been scheduled on whether to move the trial out of Hinds County, home to the majority-black capital city.
The FBI also has been investigating the case.
Authorities say seven white teens were partying in the early hours the day of Anderson’s death when Dedmon suggested they find a black man to mess with. Police said Anderson was beaten before Dedmon ran him down
One other teenager, John Aaron Rice, is charged in the case. He is charged with simple assault because a judge reduced the count from murder after a detective testified Rice left the scene in another car before Anderson died.
The case has been the subject of dozens of local and national news stories and received widespread attention after a video of Anderson’s death was obtained by news organizations.
Corpus Christi, TX - Beating Victim Calls Assault a Hate Crime (http://www.kristv.com/news/beating-victim-calls-assault-a-hate-crime/)
A man found naked and severely beaten near Staples and Morgan last week is calling the attack a hate crime. Twenty-four-year-old Keire Gartica says two men beat him and sexually assaulted him for hours while shouting racial and homophobic slurs.
Gartica says he went to a house on Elizabeth Street friday night to pay off a $5 debt, although he didn't reveal what the money was for. Then, he says the men ordered him to clean the house while they beat him with a frying pan, a gun, and other objects. He says they stripped him naked and sexually assaulted him, all the while shouting racial and homophobic slurs at the man who admits he is gay.
"It was a big joke to them and I could not get out! And every time I tried to move, they pistol whipped me."
After hours of abuse, Gartica says he escaped through a window. A witness who saw him naked and bloody called police and Gartica was taken to the hospital. The suspects, two hispanic men in their 20's or 30's, haven't been found.
NC Pastor Wants To Build Electrified Fence To Contain, Starve And Ultimately Kill Gays: VIDEO (http://www.towleroad.com/2012/05/nc-pastor-wants-to-build-electrified-fence-to-contain-starve-and-ultimately-kill-gays-video.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Towleroadfeed)
Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2012/05/nc-pastor-wants-to-build-electrified-fence-to-contain-starve-and-ultimately-kill-gays-video.html#ixzz1vYatY4yG
Tax ID # is 56-1933166 and their real name is Cornerstone Church of Maiden.
You can file a complaint against them with the IRS http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f3949a.pdf for running a hate group diguised as a church.
You can also contact the US Justice Dept and make a complaint
Rose Ochi, Director of Hate Crimes Unit
600 E Street, NW, Suite 2000
Washington, D.C. 20530
Hundreds attend vigil after reported hate crime (http://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/hundreds-attend-capitol-vigil-for-victim-of-reported-hate-crime/article_d0892b58-9ec9-566c-8b66-bb0a032b8e03.html)
Hundreds of people gathered with rainbow flags and candles outside the Capitol for a nighttime vigil sparked by a woman's account of a violent, hate-fueled attack that spread rapidly over the Internet on Sunday.
The woman said she was attacked early that morning by three masked men who barged into her house, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, cut her all over her body and carved homophobic slurs into her skin before dumping gasoline on her floor and lighting it with a match, said a friend who spoke to the Journal Star.
The friend said the woman crawled from her house, naked and bleeding and screaming for help before reaching the doorstep of a neighbor's home.
Late Sunday, police said they still were investigating the case and had yet to release an account of what they believe happened inside the home.
Teen arrested for assaulting woman on Thanksgiving day (http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/crime/man-arrested-for-thanksgiving-assault)
23 year-old Mallory Owens attacked by her girlfriend's 18 year-old brother Travis Hawkins Jr. at his family's home in Mobile, AL.
DA: Not able to confirm 'hate crime' (http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/local_news/mobile_county/da-not-able-to-cofirm-hate-crime)
Rich said it is early in the investigation and charges could be upgraded, depending on the evidence. Rich also said her office is still trying to determine a motive.
"Some people say the motive has been a hate crime. We have not been able to confirm that at this point. But that is part of the ongoing investigation,” said Rich.
If the beating is considered to be a hate crime, Hawkins could face federal charges.
"A hate crime as defined by law in the State of Alabama does not cover gay and lesbian rights. So that would be a federal charge that would need to be brought against the defendant and that would be the U.S attorney's office,” said Rich.
Family: Teen Beat Sister's Girlfriend for Being Gay (http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2012/nov/26/family-teen-beat-sisters-girlfriend-being-gay-ar-5051599/)
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397918/mallory-2/
(Mallory - left, her girlfriend - right)
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/577105_287934087982343_415398532_n.jpg
"She was invited over by the family to eat Thanksgiving. I did not want her to go, I begged her not to go, knowing how the family felt about her. But she said, 'They're trying to be nice.'"
Mallory's mother says this isn't the first time he's attacked her. Earlier this year, family members tell News 5 that Travis Hawkins Jr. hit Mallory over the head with a pipe wrench. She was injured, but the family did not pursue charges after that incident.
This time, she was beaten so badly that she's almost unrecognizable. She had to have facial reconstruction surgery, with metal plates put in her cheek bones.
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397917/mallory-1/
Unfortunately, the District Attorney is familiar with the Hawkins family. Ashley Rich actually tried to prosecute the defendant's father, Travis Hawkins Sr., in January 2011, after he shot his son, Hawkins Jr. Since the son refused to testify, she was unable to pursue the case further.
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397865/hawkins-travis-monroe/
Mallory has no health insurance. If anyone would like to donate to her medical bills, a fund has been set up in her name at any Regions Bank.
Spirit Dancer
11-27-2012, 08:31 AM
Teen arrested for assaulting woman on Thanksgiving day (http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/crime/man-arrested-for-thanksgiving-assault)
23 year-old Mallory Owens attacked by her girlfriend's 18 year-old brother Travis Hawkins Jr. at his family's home in Mobile, AL.
DA: Not able to confirm 'hate crime' (http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/local_news/mobile_county/da-not-able-to-cofirm-hate-crime)
Rich said it is early in the investigation and charges could be upgraded, depending on the evidence. Rich also said her office is still trying to determine a motive.
"Some people say the motive has been a hate crime. We have not been able to confirm that at this point. But that is part of the ongoing investigation,” said Rich.
If the beating is considered to be a hate crime, Hawkins could face federal charges.
"A hate crime as defined by law in the State of Alabama does not cover gay and lesbian rights. So that would be a federal charge that would need to be brought against the defendant and that would be the U.S attorney's office,” said Rich.
Family: Teen Beat Sister's Girlfriend for Being Gay (http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2012/nov/26/family-teen-beat-sisters-girlfriend-being-gay-ar-5051599/)
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397918/mallory-2/
(Mallory - left, her girlfriend - right)
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/577105_287934087982343_415398532_n.jpg
"She was invited over by the family to eat Thanksgiving. I did not want her to go, I begged her not to go, knowing how the family felt about her. But she said, 'They're trying to be nice.'"
Mallory's mother says this isn't the first time he's attacked her. Earlier this year, family members tell News 5 that Travis Hawkins Jr. hit Mallory over the head with a pipe wrench. She was injured, but the family did not pursue charges after that incident.
This time, she was beaten so badly that she's almost unrecognizable. She had to have facial reconstruction surgery, with metal plates put in her cheek bones.
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397917/mallory-1/
Unfortunately, the District Attorney is familiar with the Hawkins family. Ashley Rich actually tried to prosecute the defendant's father, Travis Hawkins Sr., in January 2011, after he shot his son, Hawkins Jr. Since the son refused to testify, she was unable to pursue the case further.
http://www2.wkrg.com/mgmedia/image/200/150/397865/hawkins-travis-monroe/
Mallory has no health insurance. If anyone would like to donate to her medical bills, a fund has been set up in her name at any Regions Bank.
here's the link for the Facebook page Justice For Mallory
http://www.facebook.com/mallory.owens.9/friends?ft_ref=mni#!/justice.mallory.56
https://www.facebook.com/#!/JusticeForMalloryOwens?fref=ts
Parker
11-27-2012, 09:04 AM
Teen arrested for assaulting woman on Thanksgiving day (http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/crime/man-arrested-for-thanksgiving-assault)
23 year-old Mallory Owens attacked by her girlfriend's 18 year-old brother Travis Hawkins Jr. at his family's home in Mobile, AL.
I saw this last night and it sickened me ... especially since Hawkins was only charged with assault and released on bail the same day.
Mallory is in my thoughts ... :candle:
Happy_Go_Lucky
11-27-2012, 12:37 PM
violence against women to be hate crimes, but if his sentence will be longer by this legality, good.
My wish is for this young lady to recover from her injuries. I'm afraid her physical injuries will be healed long before her emotional ones.:candle:
Update on Mallory Owens - her girlfriend picked her up from the hospital and brought her back to the place where she was attacked where she has given interviews stating the attack was not based on her orientation.
Mallory Owens: My Beating Was Not a Hate Crime (http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2012/nov/27/mallory-owens-my-beating-was-not-hate-crime-ar-5059330/)
MOBILE, Alabama --
It's hard to believe, but just a few hours after News 5 visited Mallory Owens practically unconscious in the hospital, she woke up and left. She's now back at the place where it all started on Thanksgiving night.
"I'm okay, I'm good," said Owens. "Just a bad bad night."
Mallory's family told News 5 on Monday that she was beaten by her girlfriend's brother for being gay. Mallory doesn't remember much from that night, but says being gay is not the reason she was attacked.
"A lot of things have happened between us, but it doesn't make me hate her brother," said Owens. "I don't hate her family at all, or anybody for that matter."
Her girlfriend Ally Hawkins is by her side. She says her brother's actions are not justified, but he had his own reasons for the attack. They are reasons that will be released when the time is right.
"It's not a hate crime at all," said Ally Hawkins. "We both know the reason why this happened, and it doesn't make any excuses for him, I'm not defending him at all. I know why he was angry, and that will come out."
Mallory's accused attacker is 18-year-old Travis Hawkins Jr., who was arrested on second degree assault charges and later bonded out. His lawyer James Byrd says his client is now in hiding, after death threats left him fearing for his life.
"People get a story and go with it, and before it's over its an entirely different animal," said Byrd.
The story of Mallory's beating took the online community by storm. Soon, it was known around the world. Travis Hawkins' attorney says his client was already tried and convicted by people on the Internet who have no idea what really happened.
"People have taken this and overreacted, and made it something that it's not," said Byrd.
Still, Mallory's mother Kristi Taylor has met with Mobile's District Attorney, urging Ashley Rich to upgrade the charges against Hawkins to attempted murder.
More details should be released when Travis Hawkins goes to court on December 10th for his arraignment.
Mallory Owen's girlfriend's (Ally Hawkins) version of the story:
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Mallory Owens' interview - now that she's not in the house where she was assaulted (http://www.local15tv.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=3852206)
Here's her official statement: (http://www2.wkrg.com/m/news/2012/nov/30/mallory-owens-releases-statement-ar-5078589/)
Official Statement from Mallory Owens and Family
I am represented by attorney Christine Hernandez. I am supported by my family, friends, several organizations including Equality Alabama and GLAAD as well as numerous other individuals who have offered a multitude of support to myself and my family including all of those that have donated to help me with my medical expenses. For all of you that have supported me, I am very grateful.
The last week has been the most traumatic several days I have ever experienced, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Not just for me, but for my family as well. Fortunately, we are a strong family, and we are sticking together as a family. On Thanksgiving Day, I visited the Hawkins’ home, the family home of my girlfriend Ally Hawkins. As I was leaving, I was brutally attacked by Travis Hawkins Jr., Ally’s brother. I believe that he intended to kill me. I was defenseless against him. This was not the first time Travis Hawkins Jr. attacked me and sent me to the hospital.
Travis Hawkins Jr. has been charged with Assault Second Degree by the District Attorney’s office. Although, I appreciate all the efforts of the hospital and EMS staff, police, all the investigators, and District Attorney Ashley Rich, neither I nor my family agree that Assault Second Degree is the right charge. We are very hopeful and optimistic that as Ms. Rich, her office and the police continue to investigate this crime, that the charges will be upgraded to attempted Murder. I was unconscious when the beating ended. I do not know what stopped him. I do know he has threatened to kill me before, he has attacked me with a metal pipe before, and on Thanksgiving Day he launched an unprovoked attack on me that left me unconscious, hospitalized, suffering horrific head trauma, severe injuries and in need of surgery and additional treatment. Since the attack, Travis Hawkins Jr. has been seen following my family and appearing at locations where they have gathered. He has threatened to finish me off. I believe as long as he is free on bond that my life continues to be in danger. Even beyond the physical harm, I am quite traumatized. I am afraid and I feel that I have been victimized repeatedly by the Hawkins family.
The interview at the Hawkins home was not requested by me, nor was I aware that the media would be at the Hawkins home. I was brought back to the home by Ally Hawkins. I wanted to be in my own apartment. Mr. Hawkins Sr. insisted we give the interview and statements were made. I believe Mr. Hawkins Sr. is very manipulative, I believe he organized the family and orchestrated the media representation to portray himself in a better light. I do not feel safe there. I was very uneasy and nervous while I was there. I was still very disoriented, weak, and intimidated. Mr. Hawkins Sr. has also threatened me with harm based on my relationship with his daughter. Travis Hawkins Sr. threatened me with a metal pipe while I was waiting in the car on a prior occassion. Travis Hawkins Jr. used a metal pipe to assault me on a prior occasion. He and his son pose a very real threat. I will not go back there.
It will be a very long time before I feel safe again. This sort of attack whether it is proven to be a hate crime or a crime derived from one man’s hate of another human being should not happen to anyone in this country. No one should have to endure an attack the way that I did. Neither should a mother have to see her daughter in the state that my mom had to see me.
During this investigation, many statements were made to the media, some were premature and misguided. All of us involved have been at the center of a huge media storm. At this time, we want to let the investigation continue and we need to heal. Ally Hawkins has continued to release statements and make arbitrary facebook posts and she has even offered a motive for her brother’s actions. Please know that Ally Hawkins is NOT SPEAKING for me, she is NOT representing me in the media in any way. Her statements and public posts on facebook or any other form of social media are NOT representative of my opinions, beliefs or words.
I am fortunate that my family’s love for me is unconditional. I fell in love with a girl. My family loves, accepts and supports me. They have shown nothing but love and acceptance throughout my attack, my time in the hospital, and the investigation of this brutal attack, they have been there for me, loving me and supporting me. I want to thank and publicly show my appreciation for my mom, my brother and sister, my Uncle Ricky, Linda, my grandma. Besides the countless individuals who have offered their support financially and in words of kindness, I also want to thank organizations like Equality Alabama and GLAAD for offering their direct support to me and my family, as well as working to create a culture in Alabama where people aren’t attacked for being who they are and loving who they love. Thank you to all those who have prayed, supported and advocated for myself and my family. For those of you who pray, we ask you to continue to pray for us as we heal.
Woman claims she suffered hate crime while defending bullied boy (http://www.wfaa.com/home/Woman-attacked-defending-bullied-boy-194060831.html)
/snip/
“It’s hard for me to stay strong when I see myself in the mirror,” the 27-year-old said, through her clenched jaw that’s been wired shut. Her face is badly swollen and bruised. “I can’t do anything for myself,” she said through tears.
Scarber is grateful simply to be alive. She said she was attacked at an elementary school playground for protecting a bullied four-year-old boy. The scuffle between children, however, quickly escalated into violence among adults, Scarber worries, because she is a lesbian.
....
Sondra said, ‘Can you please keep your hands off of him, he’s only four,’” Causey said.
The father became enraged, she said, when he realized Scarber, who wears baggy clothes and has short hair, is a woman, and that the two are lesbians. Friends since the third grade, Scarber and Causey have been girlfriends for three years. They’re raising Causey’s young son together.
“When he walked up thinking it was father and mom with the kid, he wasn’t as angry,” said Causey, 26, “but then when he figured out it was a female, he got like super pissed, and I don’t know why.”
She said the man punched and kicked Scarber repeatedly, hurling homophobic slurs at her while she lay on the ground, unconscious.
“He was like, ‘well if you think you’re a man… I’m going to treat you like a man,’” Causey said. “All she kept saying was, ‘I’m a female. I’m a female…' She never even had time to take her hands out of pockets to try and block herself.”
Ontario same-sex couple defiant after receiving threatening letters (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-same-sex-couple-defiant-after-receiving-threatening-letters/article13353995/)
Karen Dubinsky was shocked when she opened the mail and found a letter laced with homophobic slurs that said her family was not welcome in the city and they should leave “before it is too late.”
“I just had this chilling, weird sense of the contents,” said the Queen’s University professor who lives in the city with her partner Susan Belyea, 48, and their 13-year-old son.
The letter claimed to be authored by a “small but dedicated group of Kingston residents devoted to removing the scourge of homosexuality in our city.”
“I won’t say that we’re not afraid,” said Dubinsky, 55, adding that she and her partner of 21 years had the same response.
“We weren’t going to take them up on their offer and leave town.”
The letter threatened violence if the family did not leave.
“We will watch and wait, and then strike, at home and office, as need arises,” the letter read.
It was followed by a second note that threatened attacks using BB guns if the couple didn’t relocate.
Both letters were circulated on Facebook by the couple and their supporters.
Dubinsky said she immediately reported the letters to the police.
Spokesman Const. Steve Koopman said the police are taking the threats “very seriously” and that the “hate-based” letters were “a shock” to the entire community.
He said the letters could originate from anywhere and detectives from the major crime unit are following every lead.
One of the letters contained claims of ties to Kingston police.
“We absolutely, unequivocally believe that not to be true,” Koopman said, adding that he believes it was included as an “intimidation factor.”
He said the author or authors of the letters could be charged with criminal harassment and uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death.
Since receiving the letters, Dubinsky said her family and friends have taken to sitting on the front porch to “be visible.”
In almost 20 years of living in Kingston, Dubinsky said she’s never been on the receiving end of homophobia, even in a “milder form.”
The couple’s son is a “savvy kid” who “takes things like this in stride,” Dubinsky said.
“Having said that, he’s a kid and people just threatened his family,” she said. “The violence stuff is scary for him as it is for all of us.”
Dubinsky said the letters leave a lot of questions unanswered and she doesn’t know if anything will come of the investigation.
She added that her family is grateful for the community response, which has included flowers delivered to her doorstep, phone calls and support rallies.
“That helps us meet this kind of hatefulness,” she said. “It makes it easy to find courage.”
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