Woman claims she suffered hate crime while defending bullied boy
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“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.
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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.”