Risk to Hate Crime

Aggression and attacks on LGBT people happen all around the world. If you have some free time, take a look of this film named "Boys Don't Cry " that vividly illustrating Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and the hate crime against transsexualism. It was disturbing to me when I saw hate crime scene in the film.  LGBT people should enjoy the human rights and freedom as we have, and we should all work hand-in-hand against hate crime, and bringing those hate crime perpetrators to justice.

1) In the study of a community sample of 342 LGBT individuals, 57.7 % of the lesbians reported having been a victim of either child sexual abuse and or adult sexual assault. (Heidt, Marx, & Gold, 2005)

2) Berrill (1992) reports that thousands of episodes - including defamation, harassment, intimidation, vandalism, assault, murder and other abuse have been reported to police departments and to local and national organization (NGLTF Policy Institute, 1991), while countless more incidents have gone unreported. Statistics on incidence of anti-gay violence show them to be on the increase throughout the United States (NCAVP, 2005).

3) In 2001, 2475 Americans reported being victimized by antigay violence, up to 10% from 2249 in 1999. In 2004, According to FBI, 15% of hate crimes were committed against people because of their perceived nonheterosexual orientation. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program indicate that 15.7% of the single bias reported in 2004 were sexual orientation bias, of those 1197 bias crimes, 13.7% were specifically anti-lesbian (Mallon, 2008).

4) A study of 400 self-identified lesbians in San Francisco fund that 84% had experienced verbal harassment, 40% had been threatened with violence, 27% had had objects thrown at them, and 12% had been punched, kicked, hit, or beaten (Von Schulthess, 1992).  

5) Study of 2669 transgender people in Europe state that 79% of respondents reported some form of harassment in public places ranging from comments to physical or sexual abuse. (Turner et al., 2009).

6) Transgender people are twice as likely to have been victims of physical violence and three time as likely to experience harassment as LGB people. (Browne & Lim, 2008).

7) The Scottish Transgender alliances studied on transgender people's experience of domestic abuse suggested that high level of domestic abuse with 80% of survey respondents reporting emotional, physical or sexual abuse from a current or former partner based on a rejection of their trans identity. (Roche et at., 2010).

Be a voice for LGBT civil and human rights!

References

Berrill. K (1992). Anti-gay violence and victimization in the United States: An overview. In G. Herek & K. Berrill (Eds.). Hate Crimes. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Browne, K & Lim, J. (2008). Trans People: Additional Finding Report.Count me in Too: LGBT lives in Brighton and Hove. Brighton: Spectrum.

Heidt, J., Marx, B., & Gold, S. (2005). Sexual revictimatization among sexual minorities: A preliminary study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18(5), 533-540.

Mallon Gerald P. (2008). Social Work Practise with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People (2nd ed). New York: Routledge.

National Coalition of Antiviolence Programs (NCAVP) (2005). National information from the 2004 report on anti-lesbian, gay and transgender & bisexual violence, victimization and defamation in 1991. Washington, DC: National Lesbian/Gay Task Force.

Roche, A., Morton, J. and Ritchie, G. (2010). Out of Sight, Out of Mind?. Edinburgh: Scottish Transgender Alliance. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.scottishtrans.org/Uploads/Resources/trans_domestic_abuse.pdf

Turner, l., Whittle, S. & Combs, R. (2009). Transphobic hate crime in the European Union. Retrieved October 16, 2012 from http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/r/6/transphobic_hate_crime_in_eu.pdf

Von Schulthess, B. (1992). Violence in the streets: Anti-lesbian assault and harassment in San Francisco. In G. M. Herek & K. T. Berrill (Eds). Hate crimes: Confronting violence against lesbian and gay men (pp. 133-152). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.