Well, the newest report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) was released on May 20th, but I just noticed the message I received for it a few days ago. The NCAVP is an organization that tracks national reports of incidents of hate crimes which target GLBTQ members. Some of the information was more than a little troubling.

Accounts of incidents from strangers dropped 20%, however accounts of incidents involved known person increased by 25%. The two largest sections of these accounts were perpetrated by Landlords/Neighbors and Employers. The fourth largest category for biased oriented violent acts was from police officers - which was an increase from last year. 49% if reported incidents involved multiple offenders.

Out of these reports 6% of the victims were Heterosexual, which is thankfully down from 10% in the previous year. 24% of all reports involved serial offenses, some in excess of 10 times before a single report was made.

People of African descent made up 17% of all reports, Latino/a were 20%. People of Arab/Middle Eastern decent made up only 1%.

In 1991 there was a record of 29 sexual orientation biased murders reported. Since then, this number has been in steep decline, falling out to only 10 in 2006 - the lowest ever reported. However, in 2007, reports of sexual orientation biased murders more than doubled with a reported 21 incidents.

Assaults with a weapon only rose by 8%, although overall assaults rose by 24%. The most significant increase were assaults which involved ropes or restraints which rose by 244%. The use of bats, clubs, and other blunt objects rose by 54% and the use of firearms rose by 25%.

1 in 4 of all assaults took place in a private residence, which potentially correlates to the increase in known offenders. Still, 17% of all assaults occurred publicly (which does not include public restrooms, shelters, jails, and locker rooms) and 13% occurred in the work place.

Only 29% of all reported incidents were actually reported to the police. However, this number does not include the 4% of reports which were made and ignored by the police.Only 46% of those incidents wherein the police did respond did the victim describe the responding officer as "courteous" while 11% reported that the responding officer was verbally abusive and another 5% stated that the responding officer was physically abusive.

In 71 cases (a 91% increase) the responding officer arrested the victim instead of the offender.

Some of these numbers are just plain terrible. Out of all the reports only 29% of them were given to the police? This shows a horrible lack of trust between the GLBTQ community and the police force across the entire nation. The increase in the number of personally known offenders is also horrible. Family members, landlords, neighbors?

And this brings me to another point. Out of the estimated 1.6 million homeless youth, GLBTQ members make up 47%. A study done in 2007, showed that 26% of all GBLTQ teens that come out to their parents are told they must leave their home. This same study found that 50% of all GLBTQ teens that come out to their parents receive a negative reaction and 33% suffered physical violence. 20% of the homeless teen homosexuals also have problems with substance abuse, which is far lower than is seen in heterosexual teens.

And perhaps the worst thing ever was a report wherein a gay homeless teen who was incarcerated stated that correctional facility staff never protected gay teens from being raped by other inmates because they "all wanted it."

The link below contains the full NCAVP report, which, along with the statistics, also provides detailed accounts of incidents as provided by the victims.

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Be informed, help end anti-GLBTQ violence.