The New York City Police has arrested 7 people who were allegedly involved in a serial of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men. Two more suspects are still at large.
The suspects are members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies. The string of attacks began on 3 October when the suspects learnt that an aspiring member of them (the first victim) was gay. The 17-year-old teenager was forced into an unoccupied apartment around 3:30am, questioned about his contact with a 30-year-old man, thrown into a wall, stripped naked, hit in the head with a beer, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger. He was then released with physical threats from the suspects.
Later on the same day, another 17-year-old victim (the second victim) was beaten, questioned about the same 30-year-old man and robbed of jewelry in the same apartment. About an hour later, the 30-year-old man was lured to the apartment, stripped naked and tied to a chair. The suspects then forced the second victim to beat the tied man, burn him with cigarette and sodomize him with a small baseball bat. The last victim was the 30-year-old man’s older brother, who was robbed by the suspects, who forced into his home with the key taken from his abducted brother.
The acts done by the suspects were astonishingly brutal. Why did that happen? The crime against the first three victims was motivated by group hate towards homosexuality. Such hate is so strong that it even overrides the importance of membership, as can be inferred from the fact that the first victim was originally a member of the gang suspects. Group pressure is another factor that led the suspects to carry out the acts. I believe that individuals do not have the courage (and are not able to) put hate towards one particular group into brutal and criminal action. Given this, it is not difficult to understand why many gay people are reluctant to declare themselves gay, an act of expressing one’s self-pride and confirming one’s identity.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/08/new.york.hate.crimes/index.html?eref=rss_crime&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_crime+%28RSS%3A+Crime%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
1 comment:
Wow stories like this I can not believe. This is truely sad, the person that was killed did not even have time to explain himself whether he was quilty or not. This random act of hate needs to stop soon, becuase I think no one should be killed for who they want to be.
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