Hate Crimes

On October 7, 1998, Aaron Kreifels was riding his bike through a field in Wyoming. He wasn’t expecting that day to be different from any other beautiful sunny afternoon in the vast plains surrounding Laramie, but that day would change many lives. Aaron spotted what he initially thought was a scarecrow next to a fence. Then he noticed a glisten of blood. The sun sparkled on what he barely recognized as a face. Aaron had discovered 22 year-old Matthew Shepard, clinging to life. [ Read more → ]

CLARENDON, Texas -- A gay couple in this small, north Texas town said they think that a spray painted hate message found on their front porch is linked to an anti-gay newspaper advertisement written by a local minister. [ Read more → ]

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- A 17-year-old Missouri teen has pleaded guilty to a hate crime charge in the July 24 beating of a local lesbian resident. [ Read more → ]

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A grand jury on Monday indicted four teens who stand accused of writing anti-gay slurs and other vulgar messages on vehicles and homes in an Arlington, Texas neighborhood earlier this year. [ Read more → ]

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Lancaster County, Neb., District Court Judge Gale Pokorny on Thursday continued until Nov. 19 the case against a Nebraska woman charged with providing false information to police in connection to an alleged anti-gay hate crime that investigators now say was an elaborate hoax. [ Read more → ]

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Police in Long Beach, Calif., are investigating an assault involving four U.S. Marine Corps' personnel who allegedly attacked a film student from San Dimas, Calif., and beat him unconscious outside the Silver Fox, a popular gay-patronized establishment. [ Read more → ]

DETROIT -- A Michigan man pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges on Wednesday, admitting that he assaulted a victim because he believed the man was gay, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice. [ Read more → ]

Violence is violence and the culture that creates it is responsible. There is a difference between denouncing violence and inciting violence – this seems obvious but this past week has shown us that the line between these two is slim. [ Read more → ]

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A Nebraska woman who claimed she was the victim of an anti-gay hate crime in which three masked attackers invaded her home, painted homophobic slurs on the walls, and carved them into her skin, before attempting to set her house on fire, has been charged with filing a false police report and lying to investigators. [ Read more → ]

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- A juvenile court judge in Cape Girardeau, Mo., ruled Wednesday that the 17-year-old female suspect in the July 24 beating of a local lesbian resident will be prosecuted as an adult. [ Read more → ]

MISSOULA, Mont. -- A 22-year-old openly gay Montana man who reported he was the victim of an alleged hate crime fabricated the attack, and has pleaded guilty to charges of filing a false police report. [ Read more → ]

CINCINNATI, Ohio -- A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit brought by three Michigan pastors challenging the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. [ Read more → ]

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- A lesbian couple in southeastern Missouri is recovering from an alleged attack by three neighborhood youths in what the couple claims is hate crime motivated by the sibling’s discrimination of their sexual orientation. [ Read more → ]

LINCOLN, Neb. -- In her first appearance since suffering an alleged attack in a home invasion last week that police officials are investigating as a possible hate crime, Charlie Rogers of Lincoln, Neb., said, “I’m not hiding from this anymore.” [ Read more → ]

EDMOND, Okla. -- An Oklahoma gay man says he awoke in the early morning hours on July 21 to the noise two men dressed in black and wearing face masks vandalizing his car -- he said one of the suspects threw something in his vehicle that caused an explosion and fire, while the man other fled. [ Read more → ]

LINCOLN, Neb. — Investigators looking into an attack against an openly lesbian woman this past weekend are not ruling out the possibility that the alleged hate crime may have been a hoax. [ Read more → ]

WASHINGTON -- District of Columbia police on Monday acknowledged that a hate crime investigation is under way after a gay couple’s Saturday night out ended in a brutal beating. [ Read more → ]

INDIANAPOLIS, Inc. -- The owner of a gay bar in Indianapolis said he is certain that a blown out window at his establishment is more than a random act of violence, he thinks it may be a hate crime. [ Read more → ]

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Over 500 people gathered on the steps of the Nebraska State Capitol Sunday night to hold a vigil for a lesbian woman brutalized early Sunday morning in what local LGBT activists are calling a hate crime. [ Read more → ]

PORTLAND, Texas -- Texas Rangers and the Portland police department have released a new sketch of the suspected shooter in the June 22 attack that claimed one young woman's life and left her partner struggling to recover in a Texas neurological rehabilitation center. [ Read more → ]