Shocking Study Reveals Anti-Gay Violence Is Dramatically Increasing

If you were asked to predict whether anti-gay violence statistics were rising or falling then you wouldn’t be in a minority to think with the increased number of LGBT support groups and organizations that the numbers were falling.

The sad reality though is they aren’t.

In fact a new report, “Why it Matters: Rethinking Victim Assistance for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Victims of Hate Violence & Intimate Partner Violence” by the National Center for Victims of Crime and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has shown worryingly shown the exact opposite is true, and that service providers do not know how to deal with it.

According to Coalition numbers for 2008 (the most recent year that numbers are available for), hate crimes have risen 26% between 2006 to 2008 with a massive 36% increase on attacks on strangers. Regarding bias-related sexual assault, the increase is an incredible 48% and numbers saw an all-time high rate of hate violence resulting in murder.

It’s sounding bad isn’t it, but it gets worse. It appears law enforcement personnel are far from helping the issue with a sickening increase of 150% between 2007 and 2008 regarding anti-LGBT bias-related physical abuse at the hands of law enforcement personnel.

However the good news is you’re going to be safe in your own home.

Well actually not. Domestic violence was recorded at being between 25 and 33% , the same as with straight couples, with 11% of women reporting being raped by their lesbian partner, whilst 39% of gay men reported violence from theirs over a five year period.

So why is this being allowed to keep happening?

Well according to the National Center for Victims of Crime and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs it is down to a lack of training and understanding of organizations dealing with victims of violence on how to help LGBT victims who come to them for help. In fact the part of their study that looked at this found that the 648 responders, who were based across the country in a variety of victim assistance programs, believed their agencies lacked outreach to LGBT victims, the correct training to deal with the LGBT community and had no LGBT-specific victim services policies and practices in place.

And it appears that for many in the LGBT community it is escaping physical violence within the home that is the hardest to do, with few resources for gay victims of domestic violence. Men, for example, find that shelters will only admit women, whilst lesbians find they suffer harassment from the heterosexual women and are often followed to the shelters by their partners.

Kelcie Cooke, a bisexual trauma counsellor from Boston’s Fenway Community Health Center, one of only 36 LGBT-specific victim assistance providers in the U.S. also highlights a deeper issue – how and what domestic violence has been structed to mean:

“The definition of domestic violence is really rooted in the feminist movement which understood it to be about men’s oppression over women. That doesn’t make sense for an LGBT program and under that paradigm, we don’t even see LGBT examples when it’s all about men and women.”

Add to this that many live in fear of being outed, losing their friends or even their jobs and it’s not surprise that many members of the LGBT community are afraid to talk, and sadly even if they do it’s not always likely they will be taken seriously. In discussing a transgender domestic violence case in Miami Jeff Dion, executive director for the National Center for Victims of Crime said:

“Sometimes law enforcement and the courts don’t take these issues seriously,”

“Miami even has its own special domestic violence court but I remember one lawyer advocate who said, ‘You’re going to have a hard time getting justice if a man goes to court dressed as a woman.’ So there are still major barriers to overcome just to treat people like people.”

Depressing as the news that anti-gay violence and domestic violence in LGBT relationships is growing and not shrinking is, the authors do believe that there is potential to turn things around with DC Agenda highlighting their recommendations being to:

…advocate collaborations between LGBT-specific and mainstream victim assistance providers, advocacy for state and federal protections to ensure LGBT victims have equal access to protections, an increase of public awareness of the extent and impact of victimization in the LGBT community and increases of funding to see these objectives through.

Presented to the White House last week, the two agencies behind the report are hopeful it will lead to the development of grant programs and will have built a solid platform for the LGBT community and service providers to move forward from.

Via DC Agenda and Noel Feans (photo)