Gay Brazilian Granted Asylum By Homeland Security: Hope Now For Uganda?
New York City – A gay Brazilian man has been granted asylum in the United States on the grounds that deportation to Brazil would threaten his life. Columbia University’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic won asylum for Augusto Pereira de Souza, 27, from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a move that may bring hope to thousands of Ugandan LGBT persons in the event that the odious “Kill the Gays Bill” becomes law in Uganda. The news highlights the danger LGBT people face in Brazil. According to Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB), the largest LGBT rights organization in Brazil, between 1980 and 2009, there were 2,998 murders of LGBT people in Brazil. In 2008, 190 such murders were reported, though the GGB notes that since many crimes against LGBT people go unreported in Brazil, the actual number of people who lost their lives because of their sexual orientation is likely much greater. Calling his decision to petition for asylum in the United States “a matter of life or death,” Augusto Pereira de Souza told reporters, “In Brazil, I lived in constant fear for my life. I tried to hide that I was gay, but still faced repeated beatings, attacks, and threats on my life because I was gay. At times I was attacked by skinheads and brutally beaten by cops. After the cops attack you and threaten your life for being gay, you learn quickly that there is no one that will protect you.” He will now live openly as a gay man in Newark, New Jersey, where he had lived for some time hiding his sexual orientation. Pereira de Souza’s writ of freedom is thanks to the tireless legal work of three students from Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic, Rena Stern, Brian Ward, and Mark Musico. The trio of law students worked on the case since last September under the direction of clinic director, Dr. Suzanne Goldberg. In a statement reported by The Advocate, Ward said, “In Brazil, police routinely fail to investigate violence committed against GLBT individuals. In this environment, skinheads and other groups are free to persecute, torture, and even kill GLBT individuals with impunity.” Stern, who also assisted with Pereira de Souza’s case, said attacks and murder based on sexual orientation in Brazil appear to be on the rise there. “Mr Pereira de Souza’s story is unfortunately not unusual for a gay man in Brazil.” Such a grant of asylum is rare, largely because of the time and expense necessary to file the application and see it through the process of vetting to make sure that actual danger is truly probable for the asylum-seeker. Individuals must first make it into the United States even to apply, a significant hurdle for foreign LGBT people from countries in the developing world, such as Brazil and Uganda. For Ugandan LGBT people living in fear for their lives in a country where Parliament is debating the enactment of a law making homosexuality punishable by the death penalty, the decision to grant the Brazilian asylum is potentially life-saving news. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have spoken out against the “Kill the Gays Bill” as recently as their appearance at the right-wing sponsored National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday in the nation’s capitol. Should the Ugandan Parliament enact the bill into law, gay Ugandans could face a death sentence, their families and friends could be imprisoned for as much as seven years, and even landlords who rent to homosexuals could face jail time. Now, with the Pereira de Souza decision, the door to freedom and life in the United States is opened just a crack for LGBT Ugandans, but it is much more than they had even a week ago.
Arrest Made in Lesbian Stabbing Case
Buffalo, NY – From prosecution witness to defendant, all in one day. That’s how it went down when Buffalo Police arrested Susanna Deanna Glover of Tonawanda last week, charging her with stabbing a lesbian in the eye on New Year’s Eve outside a popular gay bar. Glover, 21, was taken into custody just hours after testifying against a man who shot her boyfriend to death right before her eyes in April 2009. Glover’s testimony helped jurors convict Jerome Thagard, 17, of the murder of Glover’s lover, Stephen Northrup, who was 31 at the time of his death. After her boyfriend’s murder, Glover moved to Florida where she now lives, returning to Buffalo for the express purpose of testifying against Thagard. The verdict in the Northrup case was handed down Monday evening. By that time, Glover was under arrest for the stabbing, which law enforcement authorities are calling a hate crime. The attack on Lindsay C. Harmon, 29, along with the murder of Christopher Rudow, a 32-year-old gay man, has rocked the Buffalo LGBT community in recent weeks. Glover allegedly attacked Lindsay Harmon outside Roxy’s, an LGBT nightclub, stabbing her in the left eye while yelling homophobic slurs. A grand jury will have to make the determination whether the charges against Glover for the attack warrant a hate crime designation, based on their judgment of Glover’s motivation for the attack. According to WIVB News 4, Glover attempted to hide her face from cameras as she was hustled into a city courtroom to face a judge. Harmon also attended the proceeding to get the first glimpse of her attacker since New Year’s, white bandaging prominent on her right eye. Some vision is returning to Harmon, according to her father, Michael Harmon, who told reporters for News 4 that his daughter still had a long way to go before full health would be restored to her. “It’s gonna be a long time and some more surgery,” he said. Glover has retained her own attorney, so the trial has been pushed back to later in February.
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.
Gay Man Murdered in Buffalo; Hate Crime Suspected
Buffalo, NY – Christopher Rudow, a 32-year-old gay man, was found murdered in his Buffalo loft apartment on Tuesday, January 5. His friends suspect a hate crime motive in the killing. Rudow was a well-liked employee of GEICO who moved from New York City to Buffalo six years ago. He was known throughout the LGBT community largely because of his expertise as a DJ, his avocation on the side. Friends describe Rudow as a real professional who had the equipment and the know-how to be a great tune-spinner. He owned expensive audio components that he kept in three trunks inside his Elk Terminal apartment, but none of it was disturbed by whoever killed him. WIVB Television reports the coronor determined Rudow’s cause of death to be blunt force trauma. No suspects have surfaced in the investigation thus far. Rudow’s murder took place hot on the heels of two other possible anti-LGBT hate crimes in the Buffalo metro area. In nearby Cheektowaga, two women were charged with assaulting a 20-year-old gay man on December 31 at the Walden Galleria while yelling homophobic slurs. On New Year’s Day, Lindsay Harmon, a 29-year-old lesbian was stabbed in the face and eye by a young woman shouting similar slurs at her. LGBT activists in Buffalo say that many more hate crime attacks have occurred in recent months but go unreported, either because of fear of exposure, or out of a sense of despair that law enforcement will ever prosecute the crimes under New York’s hate crime law. As Kitty Lambert, President of Outspoken for Equality, a Buffalo LGBT rights organization said to The Buffalo News, “I personally know of 10 unreported hate crime assaults in the city in the past two months. Why? Because people are frightened to report it. Why should they bother reporting it?,” she added. “It won’t be prosecuted as a hate crime.” The LGBT community is alarmed and on their guard, expecting more attacks. In the meanwhile, the investigation into Christopher Rudow’s murder goes on. His case has yet to be designated as a hate crime, but human rights advocates throughout Western New York are demanding answers as to why authorities seem so reluctant to employ the hate crimes laws in the battle against violent homophobia.
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.
Christmas Murder of Gay Man in Louisiana Still Unresolved
Houma, LA – Early on Christmas morning, Robert LeCompte, 39, was found stabbed to death in a prominent gay and lesbian night club he managed. His body was riddled with stab wounds, suggesting the possibility of a hate crime. $4,700 was reported missing by the club’s owner, Randall Chesnut, with whom LeCompte lived. Terrebone Parish law enforcement officers are working to develop clues in the case. When LeCompte did not come home as expected, Chesnut called the police, leading to their discovery of the gay man’s blood-soaked corpse lying in the middle of the dance floor of the Drama Club on Hollywood Road. Chesnut spoke kind words about his employee to reporters from the Tri-Parish Times: “He had no enemies,” Chesnut said. “The boy was loved by everyone. He wasn’t but 5-foot, 2 (inches), and soaking wet he didn’t weigh but 120 pounds. I’ve probably just lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and the best employee, too.” Initially, the missing money led the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office to communicate to the media that this was a robbery only. But Chesnut, himself a former detective, is not persuaded. “I would believe motivation would be definitely robbery, but when you start stabbing the body multiple times, that’s a crime of passion. I’m not ruling out the fact that it could be a hate crime. Whoever killed him was very angry, as far as the police are concerned.” Major Malcolm Wolfe, spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said that no strong leads exist in the case yet. He indicated that sheriff’s officers were working night and day to crack the case. According to Chesnut, the LeCompte family is unable to finance their relative’s funeral and burial by themselves, so members of the gay and lesbian community have stepped up to the challenge, and donations are coming in. He told Tri-Parish Times reporter Brett Schweinburg, “The gay community, I’m so proud of them. They’ve stepped up, and they’re pissed. They’re not scared. He has lit a fire in this community,” said Chesnut. “Most of the people in this community, they fear the law or they fear this, but it’s taken the opposite effect. There’s a determination here.” A vigil for LeCompte was held on Christmas Day at the Drama Club, with over 150 people attending. Vigils and fund-raisers are planned in Houma, Baton Rouge,and New Orleans with a memorial at the Drama Club set for Saturday, January 2, 2010. One of the saddest ironies of this possible anti-LGBT hate crime murder is that Christmas Day was his birthday.
“Jane Doe” Lesbian Rape Hearing Set A Year After the Crime
Contra Costa County, California – According to The Bay Area Reporter, an out lesbian known only to the public as “Jane Doe” was brutally raped by four men who attacked her because of her sexual orientation. The first preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled to be held in January 2010, over a year after the savage rape incident that nearly took her life. On December 13, 2008 at about 9:30 p.m., “Jane,” 28 at the time of the attack according to an AP wire service report, was sexually assaulted by the men who watched her get out of her car in Richmond’s Belding-Woods neighborhood. They had noticed a rainbow pride sticker on the car window, which police allege aided them in targeting the lesbian. They forced her back into her car after being disturbed by someone approaching the scene of the crime, and drove her seven blocks to another location near an apartment complex on Burbeck Avenue where she was repeatedly sexually assaulted and beaten with a blunt object. During the assault, the rapists allegedly taunted her for being a lesbian. They stole her wallet, dumped her naked on the street, and drove away in her car, which was later identified by a rainbow sticker on the windshield. Wounded and bleeding, “Jane” crawled to one of the apartments, and found help from the residents, who called the Richmond police. She was transported to the hospital where her injuries were treated, and evidence of the rapes was collected with a rape kit. “Jane’s” car was located in Richmond the next day. Four suspects were arrested two weeks later, Humberto Hernandez Salvador, 32; Josue Gonzalez, 22; Darrell Albert Hodges, 16; and Robert James Ortiz, 16. Salvador, Gonzalez, and Hodges pleaded not guilty earlier this year to felony kidnapping, carjacking, forcible rape, and forcible oral copulation. Ortiz will enter a plea on similar charges January 7, according to documents of the court. Bail for Ortiz is $3.5 million, bail for Salvador is $2.2 million, and bail for Gonzalez and Hodges is $1.9 million. The Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney, Danielle Douglas told BAR reporters that the victim, who is partnered and has an eight year old child, is “coping” the best she can. “That’s really all I can say,” Douglas said. “She’s doing her best to try to move forward.” Richmond Police spokesman Lieutenant Mark Gagan commented to the BAR on the brutality of the crime: “What’s difficult in this case is the level of aggression that the suspects showed was so immediate and over the top I don’t think that there was anything that our victim could have done to avoid being victimized,” said Gagan. “From what I understand, it was an immediate, extremely aggressive attack without provocation and without really any warning.” District Attorney Office spokespeople say that the complexity of this case makes it move so slowly through the court system. Since serious jail time is involved for all the suspects if proven guilty, each one of them has secured separate counsel, and all the defense attorneys are asking for maximum time to prepare for the trials, which will probably be split among the defendants rather being done as a single trial for all four men. “Jane Doe’s” legal counsel, Gloria Allred, who represented the mother of slain transgender woman Gwen Araujo, is not pressing the court dates, given the level of trauma her client sustained from the multiple rapes and the viciousness of the attack. A preliminary hearing is set for early January 2010, a usual legal procedure in California law in rape cases. If the preliminary hearing uncovers evidence enough for a trial in the case, then the wheels of justice will turn toward days in court for the four defendants and the victim of one of Richmond’s most brutal anti-LGBT hate crimes.
Dallas Vigil for Slain Gay Teens Voices Sadness, Anger, and Hope
Dallas, TX – A large crowd of vigil keepers gathered at the Crossroads in Dallas on Sunday night to remember murdered gay teens, Jorge Steven López Mercado of Caguas, Puerto Rico, and Jason Mattison, Jr. of Baltimore, Maryland. A third gay teen, Jayron Martin, who survived a vicious homophobic attack in Houston, was also remembered. A coalition of organizations led by Bob McCranie of the Carrolton Project and Daniel Cates of Equality March Texas met at the corner of Cedar Springs and Throckmorton, the historic center of LGBT life in Dallas to voice anger, to express their sadness in solidarity with the families and friends of the slain teens, and to send messages of hope and support from Texas to the loved ones of the boys who were attacked for no other reason than their sexual orientation. Other sponsoring organizations were Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, the largest LGBT-predominant congregation in the world, Syangogue Beth El Binah, Resource Center Dallas, the Dallas Chapter of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and the Lambda Weekly. Speakers urged the gathering to turn their anger and sorrow into meaningful action for a just world, not only for LGBT people, but for everyone. As vigil keepers lit their candles, the names of 100 slain Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual victims of hate crime murder were spoken aloud in the night. The march wound several blocks down to the Legacy of Love monument at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, and then returned. Rainbow flags were signed by many of the participants with messages of hope and support for Jorge Steven’s family in Puerto Rico, and for Jason’s family in Baltimore. A giant card was signed for Jayron, to let him know of the support he has from the Dallas-Fort Worth LGBT community.








Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. 


Hope for 2010: A New Year’s Special Comment
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December 24, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Colorado, DADT, ENDA, gay men, gay panic defense, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, Marriage Equality, Matthew Shepard Act, Media Issues, military, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Politics, Popular Culture, religious intolerance, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, trans-panic defense, transgender persons | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual people, Colorado, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA, gay men, gay panic defense, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbians, Marriage Equality, Media Issues, New York, religious intolerance, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comment, trans-panic defense, transgender persons | 3 Comments