Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Suspect 3rd Century Women Put to Death in Arena: Ancient Hate Crime?

Carthage, North Africa Province – Roman authorities ordered the public execution of a young Roman noblewoman and a female slave in the arena of Carthage on this date, March 7, 203 CE (Common Era). Vibia Perpetua, 22, a young mother, and Felicitas, a slave of like age who was also a young mother, both North African Christians, joined their male counterparts as victims in what legitimately might be called a state-sanctioned hate crime for refusing to swear allegiance to the Emperor, Septimius Severus.  Suspicion about the sexual orientation of the women has swirled around the story for centuries. Was the tie that bound these young women together faith alone, or was it something more?  Perpetua, one of the first Christian women in history to author an account of her own life, wrote a “Prison Diary” that was edited after her execution by an anonymous narrator who opens with an short introduction and closes with what appears to be an eye-witness account of the life-and-death drama that took place in the amphitheater of Carthage. Nothing explicit is written concerning the possible desire of the two young women for each other in the account, entitled “The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity.” But the lasting impression among gays and lesbians for the last two hundred years is that these North African Christian women were bound to each other with a mutuality that seems particularly “woman-centered” even for the outlawed early Christian communities of the late second and early third centuries, not to mention the strictly hierarchical and socially stratified world of the Roman provinces. Perpetua had given birth to a baby shortly before her condemnation, and Felicity who joined her in prison gave birth right on the eve of the execution. The motherhood of the women has been used to counter the suspicion of lesbianism or bisexuality, but as Yale gay historian John Boswell writes, “A young woman’s marriage in second- or third-century Rome did not necessarily indicate anything about the direction of her affections.” Others have argued that the Christian mission of the women made them comrades in martyrdom as they died for their faith, in refutation of any suggestion of lesbian affection between them. Mary Rose D’Angelo refuses this objection in her famous essay on women partners in the New Testament: “In the early Christian pairs, it is the women’s participation in the Christian mission that takes the foreground.  But that should not obscure the recognition that their commitment to the mission can also be seen as the commitment to each other.” The witness-narrator of the execution watched as a crazed, wild heifer, especially chosen for its gender to shame the young women, was unleashed to gore them. The mad cow tossed Perpetua, ripping her dress.  The cow then crushed Felicity to the ground before losing interest in the victims. There was nothing un-Roman about a young noblewoman reaching out her hand to help a slave up, as the narrator reports Perpetua does.  But then something most un-Roman takes place.  The Latin text (20.7) reads: Et ambae pariter steterunt, “And they both stood there together.” It is not only that these young women stood together, but that they did so when they were not expected to do so. Carolyn Osiek, the New Testament scholar from Brite Divinity School, writes of this dramatic moment: “But perhaps the author knew more than we suspect and was telling of a solidarity that had grown between the two women of unequal social status, who stood together as equals facing death.” In this moment of surprise, the curtain of nearly two thousand years is parted for an instant. Elizabeth Castelli writes that there are “moments of slippage, spaces where the self-evidency of gender conventions and relationships for which they were foundational might have been thought otherwise.” This surprising moment is one of them, when a coating of eroticism thinly glosses over two standing together, social unequals, equally facing death side-by-side. Perpetua and Felicity stand at the head of a long line of transgressive women who suffered gender hatred, suspect because of sexual outlaw status. At the very heart of Christian witness, two young women whose affection for each other was forged in a Roman prison hold onto love in the face of state-sanctioned hate crime.  For this, we honor them.

March 7, 2011 Posted by | Africa, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Carthage, Execution, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Lesbian women, Martyrdom as State-Sanctioned Hate Crime, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Perpetua and Felicity, Public Theology, religious intolerance, Remembrances, Roman North Africa, Special Comments, women | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Suspect 3rd Century Women Put to Death in Arena: Ancient Hate Crime?

Hate-filled Climate Named as “Suspect” in Arizona Congresswoman’s Shooting

Tucson, Arizona – The toxic climate of hate speech in the United States has been named as a “suspect” in the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) on Saturday. U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois used former Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s inflammatory rhetoric (“Don’t retreat, reload!”) as an example of the caustic political climate characteristic of political speech in America, and called for all parties to refrain from demonization and hate speech, according to the Huffington Post and AP reports. Giffords was shot through the head, six others were killed, and a total of 16 people wounded in an attack on the Congresswoman’s open-air “Congress On Your Corner” event held in Tucson at a Safeway Supermarket location. A 22-year-old, Jared Loughner, was tackled by two attendees, and subsequently arrested for the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords. While the investigation is proceeding against Loughner, who may have ties to an extremist political group called “American Renaissance,” officials across the nation are decrying the hate speech so prevalent in American discourse on virtually every level of the nation’s life. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona, where the shooting took place on Saturday, told the Associated Press: “I think that when the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, has impact on people especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with.” Sheriff Dupnik went on to liken Arizona as the “Tombstone of the United States,” in apparent reference to the lawless legacy of violence in the Wild West of the late 19th century. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona has issued a complaint against Jared Lee Loughner, charging him with federal crimes, including the murder of individuals performing their duties as government officials, and the attempted assassination of a member of Congress. Lawmakers are vociferously condemning the demonizing rhetoric of recent years in the wake of the shooting, but the roots of American hate speech and the culture of violence so rife in American life are being left untouched. For decades, minority groups like the LGBTQ community in the United States have suffered the effects of intolerance and hate speech, as well as the violence that such irresponsible language spawns. While pundits may debate the linkage between hate speech and hate violence, the dead in every state in the nation give mute testimony to the effects of bias-motivated acts carried out by individuals and groups espousing the sub-humanity of their targets. Hate speech leads to hateful deeds, as Sheriff Dupnik, making reference to the mental state of the assailant in Saturday’s attack, asserted to the Washington Post: “There’s reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol,” he said during his televised remarks. “People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.” U. S. Senator Diane Feinstein, who discovered the body of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk after his assassination, spoke to the consequences of hate-filled rhetoric: “I have seen firsthand the effects of assassination, and there is no place for this kind of violence in our political discourse. It must be universally condemned. We do not yet know the gunman’s motivations, but I am convinced that we must reject extremism and violent rhetoric.” Jared Lee Loughner is the prime suspect in the terror-attack on Congresswoman Giffords, Federal Judge Roll, and the other victims of the Tucson rampage. But bias-driven hate speech in American life, that terrorizes minorities, political opponents, and cultural adversaries, belongs in the dock in the wake of this outrage every bit as much as the man who was apparently motivated to kill and maim by the angry words he heard for most of his young life.

January 9, 2011 Posted by | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Arizona, death threats, gun violence, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, hate speech, Law and Order, multiple homicide, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Sarah Palin, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, women | , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Potential Anti-Lesbian Hate Crime at East Carolina University

Bryan Berg, ECU Hate Crime Suspect

Greenville, North Carolina – Two women from off-campus were assaulted Friday outside an East Carolina University dormitory by two men yelling anti-lesbian epithets.  ECU Police arrested Bryan Berg, an 18-year-old student, for allegedly punching one of the women in the jaw.  Berg has been charged with assault, and then released from the Pitt County Detention Center on $27,000 bond.  A second man is being sought by authorities for the crime.  ECU Police Assistant Chief Dawn Tevepaugh told The Reflector that the victims of the attack were non-students from Chocowinity, a small town in the Greenville metropolitan area.  The women, 18 and 19 years of age respectively, had visited friends in a university dormitory, and were exiting the building when Berg and the second assailant accused them of being lesbians before launching their attack.  The violence took place at about 2:45 a.m., but the ECU Police were not apprised of the incident until the hospital informed them that the two women were hospitalized for the attack.  The identities of the women are being withheld in the interest of their safety, according to Q Notes, the LGBT news source for the Carolinas.  Authorities have not characterized the sexual orientations of the victims at this time.  A witness told authorities that before Berg allegedly hit the 18-year-old woman, he spat on her.  Both victims were hurt in the assault.  They were treated at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, and the elder of the two was released on Friday.  The younger woman remains hospitalized because of a severely broken jaw. Assistant Chief Tevepaugh says that investigators have not yet determined that the assault meets federal criteria for a hate crime, but the nature of the attack and the alleged anti-gay slurs used by the attackers led the police to examine the possibility closely.  Tevepaugh told Q Notes, “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.”  Aaron Lucier, director of the campus LGBT Union, responded confidently that the investigation would be carried out in an efficient and fair-minded way.  “Hate crime or not,” Lucier said to Q Notes, “it was a violent act, something we don’t want on our campus. 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.”

October 17, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, East Carolina University, harassment, Hate Crimes, hate speech, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, Mistaken as LGBT, North Carolina, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, women | , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Potential Anti-Lesbian Hate Crime at East Carolina University

New Yorker Murders Boy Toddler “For Acting Like a Girl”

Pedro Jones, alleged infant killer, heads to court

Shinnecock Indian Reservation, outside Riverside, Long Island – A 20-year-old Southampton man is accused of killing his girlfriend’s toddler on August 1, 2010.  Pedro Jones, who was babysitting the 17-month-old tot, allegedly grabbed him by the neck and punched him repeatedly with his closed fist “to toughen him up,” the batterer said, in order to make the child “act like a boy and not a girl.” Roy Antonio Jones III, the victim (no relation to his assailant though they share the same surname), went into cardiac arrest and died as a result of his injuries late on Sunday evening. His mother, Vanessa Jones, had left her child in the care of her boyfriend to visit her cousin for about an hour, according to family sources.  Ms. Jones said that she had no knowledge that her lover had ever hit the baby before. Jones has been charged with first-degree manslaughter in the slaying, a charge that carries a maximum of 25 years in prison. He has pled not guilty to the charge, and is being held in Suffolk County Jail without bail.  NewsOneOriginal reports that Pedro Jones told police he had never hit the toddler “that hard before.”  “A one-time mistake and I am going to do 20 years,” he said.  Jones is not a member of the Shinnecock Nation as is the infant’s mother, whom the alleged killer said he intended to marry.  Her family hopes that Jones will receive a much harsher sentence than incarceration for 20 years.  The grandmother of the dead child confronted Jones who was in custody at Southampton Town Court, and shouted at him, “You killed my grandson! I hope you rot in hell!”  On Monday night, August 2, approximately 100 members of the Shinnecock Nation gathered to mourn the killing of the infant.  “People expressed the need to come together to love one another, to tighten the gap in our community so this doesn’t happen again,” Ms. Donna Collins-Smith, the great aunt of the victim, said to The Southampton Press. “Basically, we’re trying to come together as a family and do the best we can.”  The horror of this killing has shocked many around the nation.  Jones was apparently so irrationally irritated by behavior patterns in the tot he believed were effeminate that he took matters into his own hands to beat the girlishness out of him.  Because the victim was perceived to be gender-variant, the attack was a sexual hate crime according to many commentators. Michael Rowe wrote for the Huffington Post: “The beating death of 17-month-old Roy Jones was no less a hate crime because the victim was a baby. Whether he would have grown up to be gay, or transgender, or just a gentle, sweet-natured straight boy, was still many years away. More, it was irrelevant.”  As the Unfinished Lives Project has reported repeatedly, violent crimes against gender non-conforming people of color, especially young boys of color who present femininely, have reached alarming levels in our country. They are  among the most vulnerable members of our society, and are paying a terrible price for the irrational hatred of men (and some women!) who feel they must use violence to enforce heterosexist male stereotypes.  Baby Roy will never have a chance to show the world who he was becoming. Instead of making him socially acceptable in a hyper-masculine world, the man who said he loved the child, “loved” him to death.

August 12, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Mistaken as LGBT, Native Americans, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, transgender persons, transphobia, Uncategorized, Vigils, women | , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Yorker Murders Boy Toddler “For Acting Like a Girl”

Woman Stabbed In Eye by Homophobe

Buffalo, NY – Amidst a spate of recent anti-LGBT assaults in the Buffalo area, a 29-year-old lesbian was stabbed in the face and the eye by a woman shouting anti-gay slurs.  Lindsay C. Harmon was leaving a club on New Year’s about 2 a.m. when a woman assailed her and her friends with anti-gay slurs, and stabbed her in the right eye.  No one has been arrested for the crime.  While local law enforcement has not designated the case as a hate crime assault, Harmon has no doubt as to the reason she was targeted.  She is gay.  The Buffalo News reports that Harmon had never feared for herself or her friends until the attack, which authorities are calling “unusually severe.”  Harmon and her friends were leaving a New Year’s celebration at Roxy’s, a popular downtown nightclub, when a group of men and two women began shouting at them.  The exchange of words let to a confrontation.  Harmon related to SheWired.com, “I just remember saying, “What did you say?’ It’s just crazy to me. I’d never think anyone would say that in the main gay area of Buffalo. I’ve been going to Roxy’s for like 10 years.”  Then Harmon says she tried to break up the argument when a young woman in her late teens or early 20s stabbed her in the eye.  “Let’s go home,” I said. “Let’s get out of here,” Harmon recalled.  “I was walking away, and she [the attacker] came behind me, and I got nailed. I thought I’d been punched, and I fell. I just sat there waiting for her to kick me or something.”  Her friends started to go after the assailant, but hesitated when one of them shouted warned that the attacker had a knife.  At that moment, Harmon began crying out that she was blind in her right eye.  Police are searching for two women who fled the scene after Harmon was stabbed.  Following three hours of surgery, she has only recovered the ability to see shadows with her injured eye.  No one knows whether she will ever be able to see normally with it again.   According to Jay Tokasz of the Buffalo News, Harmon has stitches in her eyelid, cheek and arm and has to take three kinds of eye-drop medications every two hours. “I sleep as much as I possibly can,” she said in a phone interview, “because my eye gets really sore.”  The story of the brutal assault on an innocent lesbian has resonated far beyond the Buffalo metro area.  As of this writing, more than 17,000 Facebook members have joined a support group for Harmon online. A former resident of Buffalo, an anonymous insurance broker, was so deeply touched by Harmon’s plight that he put up a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the attacker.  Harmon says she intends to write in response to every comment on her Facebook page.  “I never thought it would get this big out into the world,” she said.

January 12, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, harassment, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, stabbings, Unsolved LGBT Crimes, women | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Woman Stabbed In Eye by Homophobe

Georgetown U’s Second Bias-Related Attack

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Washington, D.C. – According to Vox Populi, Georgetown’s most widely read blog, in the wee hours of November 1, a second anti-LGBT assault took place near the Georgetown University campus.  The university’s Department of Public Safety issued this Public Service Announcement concerning the attack: “Incident summary: On November 1, 2009 at 1:32 a.m., witnesses reported to DPS an assault on a student by an unknown male in the area of 36th & N Streets, NW. Prior to the physical assault, the suspect asked the victim several times, “Are you a homo?”  On November 1, 2009 at approximately 1:32 a.m., witnesses reported to DPS that a student walking in the area of 36th & N Streets, NW was assaulted by an unknown male. Immediately prior to the assault, the suspect asked the victim several times, “Are you a homo?” The suspect fled the scene after physically assaulting the victim.  DPS and GERMS responded to the scene. GERMS transported the victim to Georgetown University Hospital for treatment of the injuries sustained in the assault. DPS gathered information from witnesses and notified MPD. The investigation is ongoing.  Victim(s):The victim suffered injuries in the assault that were treated by GERMS and in the hospital emergency room.  Victim(s) status:GERMS responded to the scene and transported the victim to Georgetown University Hospital where the victim was treated and released. Appropriate University resources are being offered to the victim.  Witness description of suspect(s):The suspect is described as a white male, 6’2″ tall, with red and white face paint, wearing a black leather jacket. (This description was updated on November 2, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. to reflect a witnesses description that included an estimated height.)”  End of PSA.  Last week’s assault involved a woman perceived to be lesbian by her assailants on October 27. This second assault on a student assumed to be LGBT took place in spite of a rally decrying anti-gay violence on the campus by the LGBTQ Center and GU Pride, the LGBTQ advocacy organization, on Friday of last week.

November 3, 2009 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Beatings and battery, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Unsolved LGBT Crimes, Washington, D.C., women | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Georgetown U’s Second Bias-Related Attack

Student at Georgetown U Attacked Because of Sexual Orientation

georgetownWashington, D.C. – The Washington Post reports that a female student was assaulted and robbed allegedly because of her sexual orientation on Tuesday, October 27 while she was walking near the entrance to Georgetown University on Canal Road.  Her assailants yelled anti-gay slurs as they beat her, knocked her down, and robbed her of her book bag.  At the time of the attack, she was wearing a T-shirt bearing a gay rights slogan.  Reaction at GU was swift.  By Friday, 50 students protested the assault, showing their support for the woman who was targeted because of her perceived sexual orientation.  JM Alatis, a freshman who serves as historian and secretary of GU Pride, the campus LGBT rights organization, condemned the violence, “We should not have to fear for our lives when we walk down the street.”  The rally had been set in motion by Facebook and Twitter contacts in less than 24 hours, demonstrating the speed with which the linked-in community can respond to anti-LGBT violence.  Students say that intimidation and attacks like this are common in the GU neighborhood, on and off campus.  Speaking to WaPo reporters, sophomore Marcus Brazill said, “This stuff happens all the time, but a lot of us are afraid of reporting it.”  A Georgetown Med student was intimidated by homophobes with a broken glass bottle last fall, and in September 2007, a sophomore student was arrested in an incident that was considered a possible anti-LGBT hate crime.  The case was subsequently dropped according the WaPo, but the controversy led to the establishment of the first LGBTQ Resource Center on the campus of a Roman Catholic/Jesuit university in the nation.  Rev. Kelly O’Brien, S.J., Executive Director of Campus Ministry, commenting on the significance of the LGBTQ Center, said, “Campus Ministry is pleased to collaborate with the LGBTQ Resource Center to learn from and support Georgetown’s LGBTQ community. The Center helps us understand the issues, struggles, concerns, and hopes of the LGBTQ community so that we can better minister to those seeking our care.”  As of Friday, the assailants in this latest anti-LGBT attack were still at large.

October 31, 2009 Posted by | Beatings and battery, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, Mistaken as LGBT, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Washington, D.C., women | Comments Off on Student at Georgetown U Attacked Because of Sexual Orientation

Protest Calls for Passage of NC Hate Crimes Protections for LGBT Tarheels

hate300New Hanover County, NC – In the wake of a violent attack on two gay men in Wilmington, NC in July, protestors gathered Thursday to repeat their call for the passage of hate crimes protection for LGBT North Carolinians.  Chaz Housand and Chet Saunders were beaten outside a popular bar on Front Street in Wilmington after celebrating their graduations.  Three suspects are charged with the attack, which witnesses say was accompanied by virulent anti-gay slurs as the two men were beaten senseless and left on the sidewalk.  Both sustained considerable injuries, and investigators on the scene suggested that more serious harm might have been done had witnesses not intruded on the attackers.  Tab Ballis, an independent documentary film maker and local human rights leader told WWAY News, “In downtown there is a lot of general violence, but this violence by three assailants was directed towards these two men because of the perception that they were gay.”  Protestors point out that North Carolina is one of sixteen states that does not protect LGBT people against hate crimes, and they want the State Legislature to pass a statute criminalizing anti-LGBT bias crimes in the Tarheel State.  Assistant District Attorney James Blanton told WWAY News that though North Carolina does have laws protecting people from attacks against them because of race, religion, or country of origin, “Sexual orientation is not one of the protected classes. If someone commits a misdemeanor assault based on the fact that the victim has a different sexual orientation that they’re not satisfied with, it would not bump it up to a felony.”  The Safer Communities Act, North Carolina State House Bill 207, would provide protection based on victims’ sexual orientation, as well as for gender and disability.  Human rights advocates are concerned that the three alleged attackers will not face appropriate punishment for their actions because the statute is not yet law in North Carolina.  Ballis went on to say, “Hate crimes are based on fear, ignorance, and misunderstanding. And I think we all believe that folks that pay taxes deserve to be safe in their own community.”

September 11, 2009 Posted by | Beatings and battery, Bisexual persons, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, North Carolina, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, women | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Protest Calls for Passage of NC Hate Crimes Protections for LGBT Tarheels

DC Trans Murder ‘Possible’ Hate Crime

Tyli'a "NaNa Boo" Mack, Aram Vartian photo for the Blade

Tyli'a "NaNa Boo" Mack, Aram Vartian photo for the Blade

Washington, DC – Police found the bleeding body of Tyli’a “NaNa Boo” Mack, a 21-year-old transwoman of color on the sidewalk at 209 Q Street, N.W. on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 26.  She and a second transwoman had been stabbed after an apparent hate crime attack, according to the Washington Blade.  30 minutes later, Ms. Mack was pronounced dead at Howard University Hospital.  The second victim’s identity has not been released for her own protection, pending the success of the investigation of the Gay and Lesbian Unit of the D.C. police force, who are handling the case.  Sources in the G&L Unit report preliminarily that some homophobic and transphobic language may have been used by the attacker(s), and so the crime has been tentatively designated as bias motivated.  A $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who carried out the fatal attack against Ms. Mack.  The Mack family, led by her mother, Beverlyn Mack, are encouraging anyone with information about the crime to come forward.  Both Ms. Mack and the surviving victim were clients of THE, Transgender Health Empowerment, a non-profit agency offering a range of programs and counseling to the transgender population of the District of Columbia.  Brian Watson, an official of THE, related an account of what happened in the attack according to the report given him by the surviving victim on Thursday.  According to the eye witness account as related by Watson, a man and a woman began an argument with Ms. Mack at the Giant Supermarket on Ninth and O Streets, N.W.  They followed the two transgender women as they headed from the supermarket toward the offices of THE at North Capitol and P Streets N.W., and the argument continued off and on for the whole 10 block journey.  As they reached the 200 block of Q Street N.W., the argument “escalated,” and the man stabbed both Ms. Mack and her friend.  Anthony Hall, executive director of THE, issued the following statement to the press: “As members of the transgender community, we are too well aware of the mental and physical effects of threats and violence. The violent attack on Aug. 26 is one in a long string of violence against transgender people in the Metro D.C. area.”

August 31, 2009 Posted by | African Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Slurs and epithets, stabbings, transgender persons, transphobia, Washington, D.C., women | , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on DC Trans Murder ‘Possible’ Hate Crime

Transgender Woman Raped, Assaulted with Wooden Coat Hanger in Murder Attempt

trans symbol

Trinidad, CO – The Pueblo Chieftain and the Examiner.com report that on July 15, 2009 a transsexual person was attacked in a hate crime reminiscent of the murder of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman who was bludgeoned to death in Greeley, CO last year.  The victim,  a 25-year-old M to F person in transition was lodging in the Trinidad Motor Inn awaiting consultation on gender reassignment surgery when she was targeted by a suspect identified as Marcus Lee Watlington.  No age or hometown of the suspect has been announced by the Trinidad police.  Police have reported that Watlington denies any part in the crime.  According to reports on the scene, the victim was pushed into her motel room by the attacker after answering her door.  He verbally denigrated her because of her identity, and proceeded to force sex acts on her.  He then raped her, using a wooden coat hanger to assault her sexually.  To finish the job, the attacker then plunged the victim in a full tub of water in the bathroom, and attempted to execute her by tossing an electric hair dryer into tub with her.  The breaker blew, preventing a fatality.  Frustrated in his attempt to murder the victim, the assailant dragged her back to the bed, bound her with a phone cord, slapped her repeatedly, and warned her not to come back to Trinidad because her “kind” were not wanted there.  The victim stayed bound in the bed until she was discovered late the next morning.  Her description of the attacker was detailed, and according to police, fit Watlington “to a T.”  Anti-trans hate crimes are notable for their brutality and for the abject disregard of the humanity of the victim, and transgender persons are particularly vulnerable to anti-gay as well as anti-trans bias, according to the Colorado Anti-Violence Program (CAVP).  If charged with the crime, Watlington would face sexual assault, attempted murder, and “false imprisonment” charges.  The Chieftain noted that Trinidad, which is a center for transsexual reassignment surgery, has a larger than usual population of transgender persons who are drawn to the town because of the famed practice of Dr. Stanley Biber.  The surgical practice, now run by Dr. Marci Bowers, carries out as many as four sexual reassignment surgeries a day, making Trinidad known as “The Sex Change Capital of the World.”  Local police report that crimes against transgender persons are rare in the town of 9,000.  While it is still unclear about whether hate crimes charges will be filed in this case, Colorado does have a hate crime statute that covers anti-transgender crimes.  Allen Ray Andrade, found guilty of the murder of Zapata earlier this year, was sentenced to life in prison by the Colorado hate crimes law, and is believed to be the first person to be successfully prosecuted under such a statute in the United States.  The Unfinished Lives Project awaits further developments in this case.

August 16, 2009 Posted by | Beatings and battery, Colorado, drowning, harassment, Hate Crimes, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, transgender persons, transphobia, women | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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