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| Rito Osorio via WHAS-TV |
By Editors LGBTQNation (Chandler, Arizona) MAR 8 | An openly gay teen from Sellersburg, Ind.claims he was lured into a high school restroom and gay bashed, while other students looked on. Now his family is speaking out about why they think this should be investigated as a hate crime.
Rito Osorio says he was targeted because of his sexual orientation, and said he clearly remembers another teen shouting gay slurs at him before being stuck in the face several times.
“I was sitting at lunch and he tapped me on the shoulder and said hey man we got to talk. So I said ok I didn’t think anything of it. I got up and followed him in the bathroom. I went in there and I looked around and it was packed. When I looked back he hit me and he kept hitting me and hitting me,” said Osorio.
Osorio says the student used gay slurs when he attacked. The student was later arrested for battery with injuries.
The attack left Orsorio with several face fractures and a broken nose.
“He had a piercing under his lip, and that had been pushed up into the maxilla bone and chipped it, so it is stuck up there and is going to have to be surgically removed,” said the victim’s mother Andrea Osorio.
The Sellersburg Police Chief says he doesn’t believe this is a hate crime, rather a simple case of one student attacking another student.
The attacker, an un-named 16 year-old student, claimed that Osorio was spreading “rumors” that he too was gay, and that was the reason for his attack.
Orsorio’s mother said she feels as if the situtation is being brushed under the rug.
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2 comments:
The mother is right, it IS being brushed under the rug. The police are very often in collusion with the gay bashers, in that they won't lay the proper charges. Next in line are prosecutors who won't prosecute. It is despicable, and in my view any cop who doesn't treat these cases for what they are should be sacked instantly. Lay the charges, prosecute, and let the courts decide if they want to reduce the charges, but DO NOT lay charges that are too mild as I have never heard of a court increasing the charges later on.
Gay hate crimes are often brushed under the rug by the police, the government and other authorities.
I thought Santa Cruz, California, was a gay friendly city. Yet hate crimes have been perpetrated here at a Section 8 complex and the Santa Cruz Police Department has done everything possible to hide it.
In May 2007, my sister's Social Security check was stolen from her mailbox at the Mission Gardens Apartments in Santa Cruz. The police officer who reluctantly investigated it -- he couldn't believe that mail theft occurred in apartment complexes -- botched the investigation and allowed the suspects to use his police report to slander my sister.
Later, gay and lesbian magazines were stolen from my mailbox. Then a resident threatened me with homophobic language. The police refused to investigate the mail theft, while half-heartedly investigating the homophobic threats.
Later incidents, some caught on digital audio, revealed a campaign of gay hate crimes. Yet the police refused to consider the objective evidence, they refused to investigate these crimes.
I believe they are covering up their initial botched investigation of my sister's stolen Social Security check. Yet the bottom line is they have ignored crimes which indicate there is a clear and present danger to me at the Mission Gardens Apartments.
Likewise, the managing agent, The John Stewart Company, trying to evade a lawsuit, denies there are any homophobic crimes at the Mission Gardens Apartments.
As this is a Section 8 apartment complex, I have appealed all the way to HUD headquarters in Washington DC, to no avail.
Government, the police and management companies, like schools will ALWAYS try to brush hate crimes under the rug until there is no way to hide them. Fearing lawsuits, they see it in their interest to deny and deflect.
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