Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Lesbian Savagely Beaten Unconscious Defending Girlfriend’s Bullied Son

Sondra Scarber, lesbian parent, beaten unconscious by a homophobic father for speaking up for her girlfriend's child.

Sondra Scarber, lesbian parent, beaten unconscious by a homophobic father for speaking up for her girlfriend’s child. [WFAA image].

Mesquite, Texas – A lesbian who spoke up to stop school playground bullies from harassing her girlfriend’s 4-year-old son was attacked for her sexual orientation by an enraged man February 17.  When Sondra Scarber, 27, spoke to the father of a boy who was bullying her lover’s little boy, the man recognized that she was a lesbian.  He assaulted her, shouting homophobic insults, so quickly and savagely that Scarber told WFAA she did not even have time to take her hands out of her pockets to defend herself from his blows.

Scarber’s girlfriend, Hillary Causey, recalled for WFAA the horror of watching her love thrashed mercilessly.  The couple, who have been known each other since childhood, and who have been a couple for the past three years, took their child Jaxon to Seaborn Elementary School’s playground around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 17, for an outing. When other boys began pushing and shoving the little boy, whom the couple are rearing together, Scarber spoke to a father of one of the harassing boys: “Sondra said, ‘Can you please keep your hands off of him, he’s only four,’” Causey said.  Only when the man realized that the woman speaking out for her child was a lesbian, he went ballistic, shouting epithets and striking Scarber unconscious.  As the Dallas Voice reports, the assailant ignored Scarber’s pleas: “All she kept saying,” Causey recalled, 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.”  

Scarber fell unconscious, with a broken jaw and multiple bruises.  Emergency surgery had to repair her jaw with a metal plate, and she faces months of rehabilitation and recovery from her physical injuries, not to mention her psychological wounds from the attack.  The assailant is still at large.

Causey and Scarber have called on the police to investigate the attack as a hate crime, since the attacker flew into a rage about the couple’s sexual orientation.  The Mesquite Police Department, who say that they want to apprehend the suspect, refuse to designate the case as an anti-gay hate crime.  Local gay advocacy groups are pushing for the Mesquite authorities to press the case as a hate crime. Daniel Cates, organizer for the Dallas Chapter of GetEqual, has called for the community to call the Mesquite Police Department “until the phone rings off the wall” to protest the downplaying of the crime.  The Resource Center of Dallas, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ service centers, issued this statement to the press, which we quote in full:

“Resource Center Dallas denounces the brutal attack of Sondra Scarber at the hands of a man who assaulted her based on her sexual orientation, as first reported February 28 by WFAA-TV (Channel 8). As reported, the circumstances of this case indicate a hate-motivated crime, and that should dissuade the Mesquite Police Department from lessening the severity of any potential criminal charges.

The incident is another example in which words and thoughts lead to destructive actions against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. The reported violence included anti-gay slurs, followed by violent acts against a lesbian. Had Sondra’s partner not been present, her injuries could have been far more severe.

Anti-gay violence is a serious public health issue.  According to the FBI’s 2011 Hate Crime Report—the most recent available—49 of the 152 hate crimes committed in Texas that year were motivated by anti-gay bias. Nationally, nearly 21 percent of the 6,222 hate crimes committed that same year were motivated by sexual orientation.

The Center calls on the Mesquite Police Department and Chief Derek Rodhe to thoroughly investigate and swiftly arrest the suspects responsible. As leaders in the LGBT community, Resource Center Dallas will be closely monitoring the situation to ensure that justice is carried out.”

Scarber told WFAA that her face is so bruised and swollen, and her jaw so tightly wired shut, that she cannot do much of anything for herself.  “It’s hard for me to stay strong when I see myself in the mirror,” she said. She and Causey have the comfort that their little boy was spared from the bullying that nearly hurt him.  And, they have each other. They are grateful that Scarber is alive.

March 1, 2013 Posted by | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Bullying in schools, gay bashing, GET EQUAL Texas, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Resource Center of Dallas, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Murdered African American Woman Remains Unidentified–Was She Lesbian?

“Jane Doe,” as rendered by Ellis County’s Sheriff’s Office, along with photos of tattoo markings on her decomposed body.

Ellis County, Texas – The decomposing corpse of an African American woman was discovered in a rural, wooded area of Ellis County on Monday, July 23. Get Equal Texas is organizing a massive campaign to identify her, and to seek out the person or persons who took her life. In a press release dated July 31, Get Equal states on its Facebook page: “She is approximately 5’4 inches tall and weighing approximately 115 pounds. She is believed to be of African-American heritage. She was wearing a black or dark gray tank top, blue jean shorts and white Nike tennis shoes with purple shoe laces. It is believed she may have disappeared on or after the early afternoon of July 17, 2012.”  The Ellis County Sheriff’s Office has released a forensic artist’s best guess about the likeness of “Jane Doe,” along with photographs of tattoo markings on her corpse.

Sheriff’s Department Investigator Joe Fitzgerald reported to the Dallas Voice that “Jane Doe” had connections to Dallas and Irving, and was probably a member of the LGBTQ community. Tell-tale trauma evidence on the corpse indicates she was murdered at another location and then brought out to the Ellis County woodlands, a desolate stretch of sparsely populated countryside south of Dallas. “Someone killed her and threw her to the side of the road,” Fitzgerald said. He went on to say that investigators were disturbed that no missing person’s report has described a woman with the characteristics of the deceased.

C.D. Kirven, well-respected activist and member of Get Equal’s Board, said, “If this was a lesbian woman, this makes a third lesbian woman of color brutally attacked in Texas within a month’s time. As a member of the LGBT community and a woman of color, this is not just an attack on this woman but on me and others in my community.” 

Examiner.com draws a possible connection with the brutal murder and assault on two lesbian teenagers of Latin descent earlier in the summer on the Texas Gulf Coast. Mollie Olgin, 19, died of a gunshot to the head in a Portland, Texas State Park.  Her girlfriend, Mary Kristene Chapa, 18, survived her wounds, and has recently been discharged from hospital to recover and rehabilitate. Noting that police have still arrested no one for the attack on Olgin and Chapa, the Examiner post goes on to speculate:  “It very well could be that all three of these violent crimes are related. This is why a warning should go out in the Texas area for it seems that our gay sisters are becoming targets for dangerous individuals whether the police wish to admit to this insight or not.” The post goes on to call upon all members of the LGBTQ community to assist in spreading the artist’s sketch of the Ellis County “Jane Doe” and to warn women to be on their guard for a killer or killers of lesbian women of color still at large in Texas.

“The anonymous nature of this killing demands an all-out effort on the part of the LGBTQ community in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex to recover the identity of this woman whose death is the very definition of an ‘unfinished life,'” said Stephen Sprinkle, Founder and Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, which tells the stories of little known or forgotten LGBTQ hate crimes murder victims.

Officer Fitzgerald asks anyone with information on the identity of the victim or the circumstances of her death to call the Ellis County Sheriff’s Department at 972-825-4928. 

August 1, 2012 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, GET EQUAL Texas, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Lesbian teens, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, Uncategorized, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Dallas Gay Community Rallies for Marriage Equality

Senior Pastor of Cathedral of Hope Dallas, Dr. Jo Hudson and GET EQUAL Texas Regional Director, Daniel Cates speak out for human rights and marriage equality (Dallas Voice photo).

Dallas, Texas – A swiftly gathered crowd of nearly a hundred people converged on the crossroads of the LGBTQ community in Dallas on Wednesday to speak out in support of President Barack Obama who publicly declared his decision to endorse same-sex marriage in the United States.  Called together at the Legacy of Love Monument by Daniel Cates, Regional Director of GET EQUAL Texas to protest the victory of the anti-gay marriage amendment to the North Carolina state constitution, events in Washington, D.C. caused Cates to recast the rally in support of President Obama’s endorsement of Marriage Equality for all Americans.

The crowd was a rainbow cross-section of the LGBTQ and Allied community in North Texas: activists and organizers, clergy and lay leaders from churches and synagogues, journalists and television reporters, enthusiastic gays, lesbians, transgender and bisexual people, straight allies, and some plainly curious about what all the flag waving, speeches, and homemade signs were all about. Messages were strong.  Cates read the words of slain gay San Franciscan Harvey Milk, to rally the crowd to recruit others to the cause of “100 percent equality” for LGBTQ people. Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson, Senior Pastor at Dallas’s Cathedral of Hope, set the tone for this historic day, declaring that for the first time in history, a sitting United States President has declared his support for same-sex marriage.  Dr. Hudson quoted the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying today the “long arc of history” had bent a significant distance toward justice.

The Dallas Voice reports that Dallas Stonewall Democrats President Omar Narvaez thanked President Obama, saying he was proud “to say that President Obama has evolved.”  Narvaez encouraged the crowd to become politically involved in support of progressive Democratic candidates up and down the slate this November.  Rafael McDonnell of the Resource Center of Dallas, called by Cates “the most important and effective rights activist in North Texas,” said that this day was a “rainbow-colored, neon-lighted, star spangled, red letter day” in the struggle for human rights. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Professor at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth and Theologian-in-Residence at Cathedral of Hope, told the cheering rally that President Obama’s public declaration of support was the most powerful reply to the victory of Amendment One in North Carolina that he could imagine.  Citing his admiration for the amazing campaign of the NC NAACP to defeat Amendment One in his home state, Sprinkle called upon the crowd to reach out to African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian Americans, women, and other marginalized groups in the nation who are the LGBTQ community’s “natural allies.”  “We need to let President Obama know that when the extremist right wing strike out at him, which they surely will, we in the LGBTQ community will have his back!” he declared.

Other speakers, including leadership from Equality Texas, local bloggers, and members of the crowd who had a word to speak, called upon Texans to remember that they have much to do in the Lone Star State to win equality here at home.  Dr. Hudson said, “There will come a time when Lesbian couples and Gay couples will marry each other in justice of the peace offices, courthouses, and churches right here in Texas!”   As the Dallas Voice reports, “Many [attendees] shared stories of losing loved ones and not having any rights to keep their things or claim their true relationship, while others shared stories of progress in uniting an anti-gay neighborhood and overcoming their own struggles for equality.”  The gathering sang the great Civil Rights theme song, “We Shall Overcome,” holding hands as the Dallas traffic sped by.

The news organizations such as the local Fox News affiliate, NBC Channel 5, and CW 33 Dallas/Fort Worth News covered the event with video cameras rolling.  Their presence shows the far-reaching significance of the news made by President Obama and the LGBTQ community of North Texas.

May 10, 2012 Posted by | African Americans, Amendment One, Brite Divinity School, Cathedral of Hope, Dallas Stonewall Democrats, Equality Texas, GET EQUAL Texas, GLBTQ, Latino and Latina Americans, LGBTQ, Marriage Equality, North Carolina, North Carolina NAACP, President Barack Obama, Protests and Demonstrations, Resource Center of Dallas, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dallas Gay Community Rallies for Marriage Equality