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pyright 1989 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
September 17, 1989, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1
LENGTH: 2062 words
HEADLINE: Police, Gay Activists See Rise In Assaults
on Homosexuals;
Better Statistics on 'Hate Crimes' Sought
BYLINE: Kara Swisher, Brooke A. Masters, Washington
Post Staff Writers
BODY:
It is only after some time talking to Rod Johnson
that you stop looking for the scars. On his scalp, which required dozens
of stitches. On his hand and each of his fingers,
smashed and shattered. On his arm and shoulder, broken in three places.
Last September, just before dawn, Johnson walked near
a section of Rock Creek Park known as a sexual rendezvous spot for homosexual
men.
Johnson, 37, said he was on his way home from his
job as a waiter in Georgetown when he turned a blind corner and encountered
a gang of "skinheads" -- three or more. "They
came out of the shadows," he said, ". . . and I was totally encircled
-- there were people on front, back and sides," slamming him with
baseball bats and taunting him with anti-homosexual epithets that he still
cannot bring himself to repeat. "They weren't waiting for me, just forsomeone."
Three young men were arrested 48 hours after the beating
and are awaiting trial after pleading not guilty.
In an interview last winter, Mark Hyder, 18, one of
those charged, told The Washington Post that he and his friends went to
the park that night specifically looking for
someone gay, which Johnson is, to beat up. "I have a hatred for gays,"
Hyder said.
Such incidents of "gay bashing," a class of hate crime,
are on the rise nationwide, according to law enforcement officials and
gay activists. "Gay bashing is a problem in
the city and all over the country," said D.C. police Inspector Melvin
Clark.
Accurate statistics on gay bashing and other hate
crimes -- those motivated by racial, religious, ethnic and other prejudices
-- do not exist. But bills pending in Congress,
the District and state and county legislatures across the United States
would mandate the collection of such data and increase the penalties
for hate-motivated crimes. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act, a national
data collection bill, passed the House in June and awaits action on the
Senate floor this fall. In the District, a more far-reaching
bill that includes stiffer penalties will be voted on this fall.
The inclusion of anti-homosexual crimes in those bills
is controversial, and many efforts, including one last year in Congress,
founder on this point.
Those opposed to including homosexuals view the bills
as an attempt to legitimize homosexuality. "Sexual preference has no business
being elevated to the same status as race, color,
religion or national origin," said Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.)
on the House floor earlier this year.
Ensuring that hate crime laws also protects homosexuals
is second only in priority to AIDS for most homosexual groups. "If it
does not stay in, it sends out a dangerous signal
that this kind of crime is less reprehensible," said Kevin Berrill, who
heads the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's
Anti-Violence Project. "It makes us second-class citizens."
Even as politicians and advocacy groups wrangle, gays
and lesbians continue to be menaced by acts ranging from simple verbal
attack to murder. Stories abound, though many
do not appear in the mainstream media.
Locally, cars filled with young men regularly cruise
around Dupont Circle -- called "Fruit Loop" by detractors -- shouting
slogans such as "Die, faggots."
In 1987, four teenagers came into Lambda Rising, a
gay and lesbian bookstore on Connecticut Avenue NW, and threw books all
over the floor and shouted, "You faggots . .
. have got AIDS," according to employee Jim Bennett.
Phase 1, a lesbian bar in Southeast Washington, installed
a wooden barrier near its door because so many people had thrown bottles
and rocks at the patrons.
In Doylestown, Pa., two men were sentenced to death
for driving a homosexual man they had met in a bar to an open field and
slashing his throat.
"There's no question that they killed him only and
solely because he was gay," said Bucks County District Attorney Alan M.
Rubenstein, who prosecuted the case.
Last month, a California appeals court overturned
the murder conviction of three men who attacked and killed a gay man in
San Francisco five years ago, ruling that they
should have been charged with manslaughter because no murderous blows
had been struck before victim's head fatally struck the pavement.
The crime that shocked the homosexual community the
most this last year concerned two lesbians gunned down while camping.
Last summer, Stephen
Roy Carr stalked Claudia Brenner and her lover, Rebecca
Wight, as they hiked along the Appalachian trail and shot them at point-blank
range with a rifle. Wight died within minutes.
Seriously wounded in the face, Brenner walked four miles to a road for
help.
In July, Carr, who said he shot the women because
they were lesbians, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility
of parole for first-degree murder.
"I thought it was probable I would be harassed all
my life, maybe even some physical harassment. But I never thought it would
be an issue of life and
death," Brenner said. "He followed us all day, hunted
us. He tried to kill both of us, and he succeeded with Rebecca. But I
won't let him kill me in spirit."
Most law enforcement officials don't group crimes
against homosexuals together, and without solid statistics cannot assign
more officers to the problem.
But gay groups do try to record the violence.
The task force released a report in June, which it
dubbed a "wake-up call to the American people," claiming more than 7,000
cases of harassment in
1987, 42 percent more than the year before. Verbal
abuse accounted for 67 percent of the total. It also reported 70 homicides.
Locally, a yearlong study by the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence
Task Force, a coalition of area gay advocacy groups, conducted polls in
the homosexual community and asserted that 44
percent of male and female homosexuals have suffered harassment or attacks.
A Maryland anti-violence hot line project recorded
175 incidents in 1988. There were no statistics for Virginia.
Gay activists said the poll also shows an uneasiness
with law enforcement officials. They said two-thirds of D.C. attacks were
not reported to police. Of those who reported,
74 percent said they lacked confidence in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
They cite the experience of Ed Hassell. In 1983, two
high school students he met in a local bar took him to a deserted park,
where they beat and tried to castrate him. They
pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and were put on probation.
"I would never file any charges again," Hassell said.
In the trial, the defense attorney and the judge said
that Hassell made a sexual advance on his attackers, which Hassell denied.
While homosexual groups say there has been a lull
recently in violence, they criticize D.C. government attempts to keep
statistics. Only one report of anti-homosexual
violence and four reports of hate-related crimes have reached the Office
of Human Rights since July 1987.
D.C. police and the U.S. Attorney's Office blame part
of the problem on reluctance among victims to report, and the absence
of a special space on the crime forms to indicate
a hate crime. The form is now being revised, and the Metropolitan Washington
Council of Governments plans to recommend that all
local governments use a reporting form that includes anti-homosexual violence,
said Michael Cash, deputy director of the Fairfax County Human Rights
Commission.
"It's hard to tell if the program is at fault or if
it's the lack of reporting by the gay and lesbian community," said the
District's Inspector Clark. "We are not any
magicians, and need everyone to be as open as possible." Said Janice Smith
of the D.C. Human Rights Office, "We are looking into producing educational
seminars for the police, because we're committed to this."
Area gay groups acknowledge that many homosexuals
who should report crimes do not. They meet with the police monthly to
work together on the problem. "Gay citizens
are still paranoid about it," said Chris Bates, co-chairman of the Mel
Boozer Roundtable, a black gay group. "It's all got to do with
the closet mentality."
Collecting data is the point of the Hate Crimes Statistics
Act that passed the House by a vote of 383 to 29. The bill authorizes
the Justice Department to collect data on hate-motivated
homicides, assaults, robberies, burglaries, thefts, arsons, vandalism,
trespassing and threats. The FBI already publishes a Uniform
Crime Report from 16,000 state and local police departments on many crimes,
but does not separate hate crimes. The bill aims to help law enforcement
officials spot trends and formulate enforcement and educational strategies.
"We ought to know the level of the poison that is in our system," said
Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), the bill's sponsor.
This bill has attracted much wider support than anti-discrimination
bills that protect gays. More than 100 national groups are fighting hard
to keep homosexuals in. "We're not just talking
about the Bidens and the Kennedys," said Michael Lieberman, associate
director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Indeed, congressional supporters include such conservatives
as Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.). But
the Senate leadership has not yet scheduled the bill for a vote on the
Senate floor because Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has threatened to attach
amendments deemed unacceptable by the bill's
supporters. A copy of Helms's amendment obtained by The Washington Post
says, in part, that "the homosexual movement
threatens the strength and the survival of the American family." Helms
derailed a hate crimes statistics bill last year. Helms's office
did not return repeated phone calls.
In the District, the Bias-Related Crime Act of 1989,
proposed by council member John A. Wilson (D-Ward 2) and expected to reach
the full council this month, would go a step
further by increasing penalties for hate crimes and providing appropriate
civil relief for the victims. Among the provisions: Criminals
would face 1 1/2 times the maximum punishment and, in some juvenile cases,
parents could be held responsible for civil damages. "It's a real and
symbolic statement . . . because there is a lack of an explicit signal
saying this is wrong," said Roger Doughty, the president of the Gay and
Lesbian Activists Alliance.
Maryland and Virginia have reporting laws and impose
additional penalties for hate crimes, but neither includes anti-homosexual
violence. Montgomery County is poised to become
an exception this fall when the County Council votes on a measure, introduced
by its president, to extend the protections to homosexuals.
Nationwide, five states -- California, Oregon, Minnesota,
Wisconsin and Connecticut -- formally monitor anti-gay crimes, though
many cities and counties do.
None of the laws will come soon enough for Johnson,
who still vividly remembers his assault in Rock Creek Park. He is now
preparing for the trial and plans to file a
civil suit against Hyder, of Sutherland, Va., and the others charged with
assault with intent to kill and armed robbery, David M. McCall, 18,
of Dale City, and Richard C. Grimes, 18, of Montgomery County. "There
was no warning. It's not like I had two minutes to stand there and watch,"
he said. "And I honest to God didn't feel a
thing. I felt implosions and heard reverberations and sound . . . . But
I didn't say a thing -- it was like I moved
myself to a higher plane or something."
After the attack ended, Johnson managed to get up
and flag help. "I was so enraged that just a simple cry of help was so
minimal," he said. "I had to express anger or
get out some primal scream. I think everyone in Northwest heard me yell."
It took Johnson months to recover physically, and
emotional scars remain. There is the fear of being alone in the dark,
a childhood kind of terror most people ultimately
shed, but is back again for Johnson. A man who loves the fresh air, he
now keeps his windows tightly locked. He takes cabs door to door
and pays the cabdriver an extra dollar to wait for him to get inside safely.
He moved to a new house in upper Northwest when he found it too painful
to live near the scene of his attack.
A year later, Johnson has nightmares. His doorbell
rings and there's a man there about to attack him. "Sometimes I run, sometimes
I stand my ground, sometimes I slam the door,"
he said. But the outcome is always the same -- Johnson is brutally beaten.
"I'm always the victim."
GRAPHIC: CHART
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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