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Police have not concluded an investigation into
the brutal beating of 16-year-old Caitlin Meuse in Concord, Massachusetts,
that came soon after she had a confrontation with another girl at school
while participating in a Day of Silence, to support gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender kids.
Police should do their job,
and follow all possible leads in solving the crime. But neither the police
nor the school nor the community should dismiss the possibility that this
act was a hate crime, possibly inspired by Meuse’s bisexuality or her
participation in a gay-supportive activity.
It seems some in the
community already have.
Assistant Superintendent
Nadine Binkley told the Concord Journal she thought it was “unfortunate”
that people were wondering whether or not the attack was a homophobic act.
“There are a lot of
rumors at this point,” said Binkley. “Nothing is substantiated by fact.
Unfortunately people are trying to make a tie between the two events.”
“There were scores, maybe
even hundreds, of students that participated in the Day of Silence,”
Arthur Dulong added. Dulong is the principal at Concord-Carlisle High
School, where Meuse is a junior. “There is just no reason to think the two
events are related. None at all.”
Sixteen-year-old Meuse
thinks there is every reason to do so.
On Wednesday, April 9,
Caitlin was participating in the Day of Silence when she says she and
several other friends (who were also participating in the action) had a
heated confrontation in the school hallway with a girl who disapproved of
the Day of Silence. Meuse says the girl started shouting anti-gay insults
and obscenities at them.
Meuse couldn’t respond to
the verbal attack, because it was a Day of Silence. So she pulled out a pen
and started to write a response in a note to the girl. But when she tried to
give the girl the note, the girl blew up into more obscenities, says Meuse.
Meuse says she then alerted school authorities about the
encounter—breaking her Day of Silence—because she felt the incident
shouldn’t go unreported.
The following day, at about
7:15 in the evening, as Meuse was walking home from a friend’s house who
lives just a few doors down the block on the same street in town where Meuse
resides, Meuse was attacked and beaten. A neighbor found the teenager lying
unconscious on the ground, with wounds to her head and neck. Her injuries
landed her in the intensive care unit at Boston Medical Center. Meuse
suffered head injuries, deep cuts, serious swelling, several missing teeth,
and a broken nose. She also hurt her shoulder and arms, probably when she
fell to the ground from the attack. Luckily, Meuse did not suffer any
long-term brain damage.
Meuse, who does not
remember the details of the attack, says police have speculated she may have
turned around to face her attacker and was hit repeatedly with an object
such as a baseball bat or tire iron.
Meuse says she is
“absolutely convinced” that the attack is related to the confrontation
she had at school. “I’m not extremely happy with how the police are
handling this,” she told me. “It’s pretty obvious to everyone but the
police” that it’s connected to the incident at school. She believes
there are too many things that connect the incidences for them to be a
coincidence. In addition, she says another girl who was in the confrontation
at school and participating in the Day of Silence has since received a
telephone threat.
Because it is ongoing, the
police are not commenting on the investigation except to say that they are
looking into several leads, including the possibility of a hate crime
related to the Day of Silence at school. They are also following other leads
that do not have anything to do with the school.
Meuse says those other
leads include the possibility that an ex-boyfriend—whom she recently broke
up with—may be involved, a theory she finds implausible. Also, she said
that there were rumors she was a drug user and that the crime is related to
her owing money to drug dealers. She admitted that she had
“experimented” with drugs, as so many teenagers do. But she says she
does not use drugs regularly, and that she does not owe anyone money for
illegal substances.
Meuse says she can’t help
but feel victimized a second time. Not only was she beaten up, but now she
feels as if she is being turned into the bad guy, with her reputation at
stake and possibly ruined.
That shouldn’t be
happening. Regardless of why Meuse was beat up, she was the victim here.
The police are doing their
job by following every possible lead. But they should not give short shrift
to the possibility that this was a hate crime.
The school is, by all
accounts, a place that fosters tolerance and diversity. Even if the attack
is related to the confrontation at school and the Day of Silence, it’s
hard to see how anyone would try to hold the school responsible for the
beating, which took place after school hours and off school grounds.
Yet
that makes the premature comments of school officials denying that the two
had anything to do with each other all the more surprising and
inappropriate. We don’t yet know what happened here, and for school
administrators to be definitively stating that there is no connection is
just irresponsible. It might also send a message to students that the school
is not willing to fully support them and back them up when push comes to
shove on the issue of protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
kids.
That
would be a loss not just for Meuse, but for everyone.
Mubarak Dahir
receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com.
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