Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Brutal Stabbing Death of Puerto Rican Transwoman Possible Hate Murder

Corozal, Puerto Rico – Ashley Santiago’s mother pressed police to investigate why she had not heard from her daughter since Sunday, April 18.  When law enforcement entered Santiago’s home on April 19 in Corozal, a municipality just 25 miles southwest of San Juan, they found her naked body in a large pool of blood collapsed on the kitchen floor.  She had been stabbed 14 times, according to the report of authorities to El Nuevo Día.  Police also reported that they could not find Santiago’s 2009 Toyota Corolla parked outside her home.  EDGE Boston picked up the story overnight, and has flashed it across the United States’ LGBT blogosphere.  Santiago, 31, was a popular hair stylist at a local salon. Echoes of the savage dismemberment-killing of gay teen Jorge Steven López Mercado in November 2009 still reverberate around the island.  His alleged murderer, Juan A. Martínez Matos, has yet to stand trial for the beheading, butchery, and attempted immolation of his victim.  After several postponements, Martínez Matos is docketed to stand trial for the murder of López Mercado in Caguas on May 3.  While law enforcement officials have not yet designated Santiago’s murder as a hate crime due to the perceived sexual orientation or gender identity and expression of the victim, LGBT activists across the region are calling on police to invoke Puerto Rico’s seldom-used hate crimes statute which covers anti-LGBT hate crimes.  Pedro Julio Serrano, noted San Juan activist who represents the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Puerto Rico, told EDGE, “The authorities have a legal obligation to investigate this hate angle. We urge the police and the prosecutor to appropriately investigate this murder; to determine whether it was motivated by prejudice and if there is enough evidence to classify it as a hate crime at this moment.”  As Transrespect Versus Transphobia, a TVT monitoring agency in Europe reports, a transperson’s murder is reported every third day throughout the world, on average. for the last year and a half.  Authorities acknowledge, however, the deep under-reporting of the actual number of transphobic murders.

April 20, 2010 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, home-invasion, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Legislation, Puerto Rico, Social Justice Advocacy, stabbings, transgender persons, transphobia, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Brutal Stabbing Death of Puerto Rican Transwoman Possible Hate Murder

Gay Teen’s Murder Inspired Federal Student Non-Discrimination Act

Seattle students celebrate Pride, photo by jglsongs

Washington, DC – The execution-style murder of a 15-year-old gay boy inspired an openly gay Congressman to author the Student Non-Discrimination Act.  Lawrence “Larry” Fobes King was shot twice in the back of the head two years ago by a fellow computer class student, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney at E.O. Green Middle School in Oxnard, California.  Now, even before McInerney stands trial for murdering his gender non-conforming classmate, Congress will consider the proposed law which for the first time would make it unlawful throughout the country for a any school receiving federal aid to discriminate against a person because of a perception that the individual is gay or lesbian.  As VCStar.com reports, “Under the proposed law, known as the Student Non-Discrimination Act, gay and lesbian students in public schools could not be excluded from participating in or be subject to discrimination under any educational program that receives federal assistance. Discrimination would include harassment, which is defined as acts of ‘verbal, nonverbal or physical aggression,’ as well as intimidation or hostility based upon a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.”  Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado), the author and primary sponsor of the bill said that King’s death was foremost in his mind as he framed this legislation and promoted it among his colleagues. “I absolutely had Larry King in mind and other kids like him,” he told reporters.  In an interview with DCAgenda.com, Polis said the legislation would give schools across the country tools to fight against discrimination that includes “everything from exclusion from prom, to banning clubs, to lack of actions addressing bullying situations.” Polis continued, “Gays and lesbians across the country face discrimination and frequently institutionalized discrimination in many school districts, and giving them a federal remedy, just as girls do and minorities, will help address this.”  The bill, H.R. 4530, has good support in Congress, with 65 co-sponsors including Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts).  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) is reviewing the legislation which Polis introduced in late January 2010.  Nine out of ten LGBT students in middle and secondary schools throughout the nation report that they have been harassed because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, and 61 per cent of them say they feel unsafe in their schools because of attitudes about their sexuality, according to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.  According to his school friends, Larry King suffered repeated harassment because of his feminine self-presentation.  He sometimes wore jewelry and dressed in high heels and feminine apparel.  Students have confirmed that he had tense exchanges with McInerney in the weeks before the fatal shooting.  Rep. Lois Capps (D-California), one of the bill’s co-sponsors and the Congresswoman representing Oxnard where King was murdered, told the VC Star, “Larry’s murder was particularly painful because it happened at his school, a place that should have been a sacred space where he could grow and learn in a safe and supportive environment.”  School officials in Oxnard contend they did nothing wrong, so the proposed law would not affect them.  Their critics, among them LGBT activists in Southern California, counter that nothing substantive has been done to address the underlying hatred that permitted one of their students to act out his phobia on another, to the point of murder.  McInerney, who is to be tried as an adult because of indications of pre-meditation of the crime, has pleaded not guilty to murder and hate crimes charges in the case.

February 20, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, California, Colorado, gay teens, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Legislation, Lesbian women, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Politics, School and church shootings, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Threatening Postcards to Gay Profs Ignite Investigations

Images on hate mail sent to gay professor, John Koster photo for North County Times

San Marcos, CA – Authorities for the county, state, and federal governments launched a co-ordinated investigation last week into menacing postcards being sent to three gay Palomar College professors.  Since mid-2008, 20 postcards threatening murder have been sent to the trio, with 1o of these targeting Dr. Fergal O’Doherty, an open and out gay man who teaches English at the San Marcos campus.  O’Doherty said that FBI agents had contacted him on January 21, informing him that they are carrying out an investigation.  Sending threats through the U.S. Mail is an automatic federal offense.  O’Doherty told Morgan Cook, staff writer for the North County Times, that the cards sent to him have included images of sexual violence and death, the most disturbing of which showed skeletons engaged in sex acts with a repetitive caption reading “I’m glad I’m not dead” 10 times.  The tenth caption omitted the word “dead.”  One of the most recent cards Professor O’Doherty received shows a collage of pop culture images, a Nazi swastika, and a drawing of Elvis Presley sporting devil’s horns.  The caption on this postcard reads, “I want to go to Hell like Elvis.”  Authorities have not yet determined that these cards constitute a hate crime, but colleagues on the Palomar College campus are not waiting for such a determination.  They have founded a group to raise awareness of hate crimes and combat them before they are acted out, called the Palomar College Committee to Combat Hate.  Members of the group are committed to the human rights of LGBT people on the campus.  O’Doherty says that since he is one of the few openly homosexual professors at the 30,000 student community college, located 30 miles north of San Diego, his sexual orientation is probably the magnet for the hate mail.  From the variety of academic and pop culture icons incorporated into the cards, some as eminent as singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and author Ernest Hemingway, but also including relatively obscure philosophers, O’Doherty speculates that the person creating them is intelligent, well-read, and dangerous.  “[The card-creator] mentions works by writers and philosophers that aren’t even assigned in undergrad classes,” he told the North County Times.  While this is not the first time O’Doherty and other gay faculty have been harassed for their sexual orientation, this is the first time officials have taken the threat seriously.  Even then, when the postcards started appearing, campus police refused to act, apparently believing that they were written by a harmless crank.  With over 13,000 documented violent crimes perpetrated against LGBT people throughout the nation in the decade prior to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in October 2009, and spiking numbers of anti-LGBT hate crimes in California where Proposition 8 and Marriage Equality are such hotly contested issues, the decision to launch an investigation is more than prudent on the part of law enforcement.  Prevention is possible only when the menace is taken seriously.  That is exactly what Professor O’Doherty knows to be true, as he shows his most recent death threat by mail to the press.

January 29, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, California, death threats, FBI, gay men, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Marriage Equality, Matthew Shepard Act, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Popular Culture, Proposition 8 | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Threatening Postcards to Gay Profs Ignite Investigations

Trans Community Demands Justice for Myra Ical

Houston, TX – Cristan Williams, Executive Director of the Transgender Foundation of America, takes the murder of Myra Ical personally.  “She died struggling for her life…She went down fighting and she was literally beaten to death,” she said to reporters for KHOU 11 News.  “It’s personal.  I feel it on a personal level.”  Hundreds agree with Williams.  Myra Chanel Ical, 51, died in a Montrose area field a week ago, and Houston’s transgender community has rallied to her memory.  Seven members of the transgender community have died violently in Houston in the last eleven years, and now the vigil organized to remember Ms. Ical on Monday night is being billed as the largest transgender event in Houston’s history.  The vigil’s organizers intend to focus attention on the plight of transgender people in Harris County and Houston as they honor Ms. Ical’s memory and call for neighbors in Montrose to share any leads they may have on the unsolved murder with police investigators.  While her slaying is not yet designated as a hate crime, police are certainly not ruling anything out.  Sgt. Bobby Roberts, spokesperson for the Houston Police Department, told reporters, “It could have been anything at this point. We just don’t have any motive whatsoever on this case.”  ABC News 13 reports that Ms. Ical’s body was covered in bruises and bore several defensive-type wounds that showed she was fighting back against her attacker(s).  Harris County’s Medical Examiner ruled that she died from strangulation by some sort of ligature.  Cristan Williams cannot get the horror of how Ms. Ical died out of her mind.  “That in and of itself was just a horrific way to die. Her last moments of life were sheer terror.”  Williams asks why none of the seven murders of Houston transgender people have been solved.  Police told her they have no evidence in any of the cases, something Williams attributes to the way anti-transgender crimes went largely unreported in the recent past.  Until the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act this past October, local and federal law enforcement agencies were not mandated to keep statistics on transgender hate crimes.  Like the transgender population, these crimes were largely ignored.  Human rights advocates for the LGBT community are watching closely to see if the election of Annise Parker, an open and out lesbian, as Mayor of Houston will make a difference in how law enforcement and the media approach violence against some of the most vulnerable citizens of America’s 4th largest city.

January 25, 2010 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, Matthew Shepard Act, Media Issues, Protests and Demonstrations, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, Strangulation, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia, Unsolved LGBT Crimes, Vigils | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trans Community Demands Justice for Myra Ical

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