The gruesome attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando a year ago was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Yet even without those 49 victims, 2016 was the deadliest year on record for the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Monday by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP).
Outside of the lives lost at Pulse nightclub, the NCAVP found a 17% increase in hate killings from the previous year. The group collected data on 1,036 incidents of hate violence from 12 local NCAVP member organizations in 11 states for its 20th annual report, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2016.”
“I think with increased visibility comes increased vulnerability,” said Shelby Chestnut, director of community organizing and public advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project.
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In the U.S., gay marriage had been set as a benchmark for equality. But advocates say the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2015 — which made same-sex marriage a legal right — was never a measure of societal or cultural acceptance of the LGBTQ community. It was never a guarantee their lives were safe.
Here are just some of the crimes committed against LGBTQ people in 2016:
- In April 2016, Steven Nelson, a white cisgender gay male, died in a hospital after being brutally beaten by Kelly Schneider, a man he had arranged an online encounter with on the website Backpage.com. Schneider lured Nelson to an isolated area, then beat him with steel-toed boots while using anti-gay slurs. A federal hate crime charge was brought against Schneider, who is now serving a sentence of 28 years to life.
- In August 2016, Rae’Lynn Thomas, a black transgender woman, was shot to death by her mother’s ex-boyfriend in Columbus, Ohio. James Allen Byrd was charged with her homicide but was found incompetent to stand trial. According to Thomas’ mother, Byrd was transphobic.
- Danielle Smith, a white bisexual cisgender woman, and her mother, Teresa Jackson, were murdered in August 2016 in Camdenton, Mo. Their bodies were found in their burnt-down home. Their next-door neighbor, Steven Ray Endsley, was charged in their deaths. According to the Camden County Sheriff’s office, witnesses told police Endsley had an issue with Smith’s sexual orientation.
“We’re not sending clear messages that LGBTQ lives are valued,” Chestnut said.
Since the presidential election, the New York City Anti-Violence Project has seen a 45% increase in calls to its violence hotline. More than 100 anti-LGBTQ bills in 29 states have been introduced in the past five months, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a think tank that researches and analyzes state and federal laws with LGBTQ implications.
“Right now you see marginalized communities being pushed further to the margins than ever before,” Chestnut said.
Trans people: More visible, and the least safe
The number of Americans who report knowing a transgender person doubled in seven years, according to a 2015 GLAAD survey. From Caitlyn Jenner to Laverne Cox, the trans community is more visible then ever, yet trans people, especially trans women of color, face significant barriers to their health and safety, according to the 2015 report, “Understanding Issues Facing Transgender Americans,” co-authored by MAP, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Transgender Law Center.
Trans people have the least access to resources, to social capital, to housing, to jobs and to medical care. Transgender people in the U.S. are nearly four times as likely to be living in extreme poverty, according to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey.
“It puts folks in places where they are more likely to be unsafe,” said Beth Hamilton, associate director at the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence.
Hate crimes against transgender people are shockingly common. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, only 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender, yet the NCAVP said in 2016 it tracked 21 homicides of transgender and gender-non-conforming people. In 2017 so far, it’s tracked 12, and 10 of them have been transgender women of color.
Transgender people, Hamilton said, are also especially vulnerable to sexual violence. Studies suggest half of transgender people will experience sexual violence at some point in their lives.
“If the only way somebody is going to validate my gender identity or the only access to physical touch I experience is going to be something that is harmful to me or problematic, I’m going to be less likely to sort of stop the behavior,” said Hamilton, who identifies as gender variant and uses the pronouns “they” and “them.”
Intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who identify as LGBTQ experience sexual violence at rates equal to or higher than heterosexuals:
- 44% of lesbians and 61% of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner, compared with 35% of heterosexual women.
- Half of bisexual women will experience sexual violence at some point in their lifetimes.
- 26% of gay men and 37% of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner, compared with 29% of heterosexual men.
- Bisexual women are stalked twice as much as straight women.
Existing statistics likely don’t reveal how pervasive sexual violence is in the LGBTQ community, Hamilton said. Sexual assault is a notoriously under-reported crime, and advocates suspect the rates of reporting are even lower for LGBTQ survivors.
Why it’s so hard for LGBTQ survivors
“Folks feel like, well, we’re already stigmatized, and people already think a certain thing of us, so putting that out there for the world to see is not something that feels good,” Hamilton said.
The ways sexual violence plays out in LGBTQ relationships may sometimes look different from heterosexual ones, especially if an LGBTQ person has not shared their identity publicly.
“If there are folks who are not ‘out’ in their families or in their communities, that’s an added tactic” a perpetrator could use to intimidate a victim, Hamilton said.
As a child, Hamilton was sexually assaulted by a man, and said another obstacle they experienced talking about their assault was overcoming the worry that doing so might undermine their identity.
“I genuinely believe at 38 years old my mom still thinks that because I was assaulted as a child that’s why I am queer,” Hamilton said.
For years Hamilton was reluctant to disclose the assault for fear others would think the same.
“I think that sparing yourself from some of that — whether that’s internalized homophobia or whatever it is — becomes a safety mechanism,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton is also a survivor of intimate partner violence, which they experienced with their first girlfriend. After Hamilton came out, their family struggled to accept their identity, and in hindsight Hamilton said that made them more vulnerable.
“I kind of isolated myself, and didn’t have a lot of folks I could lean on, to sort of say, I need help getting out,” Hamilton said.
When an LGBTQ person does seek help, they face additional obstacles. The NCAVP found that 66% of LGBTQ survivors who interacted with police said police were indifferent or hostile. The report found black LGBTQ survivors were nearly three times more likely to experience excessive force from law enforcement.
LGBTQ sexual assault survivors also face barriers in both accessing and receiving support from service providers such as crisis centers, support groups and shelters.
“Services are sort of set up with this model survivor in mind,” Hamilton said. “I think that for many folks who come from oppressed communities, what they are actually met with are services that don’t quite work for them, or they don’t see themselves represented in the staff or the setting.”
A 2015 report from the NCAVP found nearly half of LGBTQ survivors who had experienced intimate partner violence and tried to access an emergency shelter had been turned away. Of those, 71% reported they were denied services because of their gender identity. A women’s-only shelter, for example, may not accept a trans woman.
Cause for hope
Chestnut said, despite the daunting statistics that show violence against the LGBTQ community is on the rise, there is something she finds encouraging: More and more people are reaching out to the organization asking how they can help and intervene on behalf of LGBTQ people.
The group typically holds one volunteer orientation per month, but had to add several more in the months following the presidential election to fill the demand.
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“People are dying as a result of anti-LGBT violence almost daily in this country, and it is everyone’s problem,” Chestnut said. “People need to understand that it’s happening in their communities whether they’re wealthy communities, poor communities, white communities, communities of color, immigrant communities. … Now, more than ever, people need to stand up and defend the rights of LGBT people.”
