 |
| Joseph Baken, from Facebook |
A spokesperson for the Missoula Police Department told local media that the department had developed new information regarding the alleged hate crime which led investigators to charge Baken late Monday.
According to the Missoula Independent, Baken told the MPD investigators that during the early morning hours of August 5 as he was celebrating his 22nd birthday, he approached three men in a club asking where could find a local gay bar, and after being invited outside to have a cigarette with one of the men, he was attacked and beaten. In the hours after the alleged incident, word spread via social media including a Facebook page, "Wipe Out Homophobia" which identified Baken only by his first name of Joesph. The page went on to say that his assailants hurled anti-gay epithets like "faggot" at him during the attack. "Nobody deserves this, especially not just because of your sexuality," the page's organisers wrote. There was also a picture taken immediately after the attack according to the page's creators. {Depicted above}
The story began to fall apart after the Missoula Independent newspaper and MPD investigators obtained video footage that showed Baken doing a backflip on a local street, sustaining the injuries- lacerations to his face- that were depicted on social media sites, when he landed wrong, injuring himself.
D Gregory Smith, a local licensed mental health counselor, LGBTQ Equality Rights activist, and Executive Director of AIDS Outreach - a Bozeman, Montana based HIV testing service was angered by the reports that the crime were in fact false.
Smith told LGBTQNation Tuesday:
"Yeah, I’m angry. I think this may have set things back a bit as far as people taking the threat to LGBTQ people seriously in the state of Montana.
When someone needs the help of the police because they have been a victim of gay assault, will it be met with deep suspicion and possibly a sneer?"
Smith added:
"I’m also really worried about the kid who reported the whole thing.
I’m worried that this will ruin his life. I’m worried that this decision to report- however it was made- was possibly made under the influence. Bad decisions are made every day under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Montana is populated with an extraordinary amount of repeat DUI offenders. Our stats are not pretty. When Montana police respond to fights, domestic violence or robbery, they’re mostly alcohol related. Ask any cop. In a 2010 survey of Montana State Prison inmates, 93% had alcohol related to their crime. 93 percent. So I’m worried that an all-too-common clouded decision-making process will become a reason for retribution.
Yeah, I’m worried that the community that so quickly rallied around him will turn just as quickly against him."
Baken was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Posts
1 comments:
Seems to me an ignorant, self-centered kid ruining his life because he decided to make up a story either to hide his drunken self-injury or to use his drunken self-injury in an attempt to make himself feel more important.
In a reality where gay men and women are verbally or physically assaulted on a daily basis, claiming that you were when you have not been only hurts those who have been truly victimized.
Post a Comment