Dylan Beard’s “friends” are definitely awful people — they lured the 17-year-old to a skate park and then beat him up while shouting gay slurs. Making matters worse, the local police were like “eh,” and haven’t really don’t much about it.
But the good news is that his family is completely awesome.
His mom, Jennifer Beard has hired an attorney and now they’re demanding action from the Department of Justice. They want the attack investigated as a hate crime. Texas is one of the states that identifies sexual orientation as a category for hate crimes (but not gender expression).
And Dylan’s uncle, Tom Plunkett, is furious too. “As a military veteran it kind of disappoints me, a country I defended,” he said. It sucks that Dylan endured this attack, but bless his family for being so supportive.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Dylan is home-schooled, and doesn’t really know his attackers that well. It’s totally mysterious why they would decide to coordinate an attack on him.
According to his mom, police didn’t care that the attackers bragged about it on social media. In fact, the police told reporters that they didn’t know about the bragging at all — but that’s how Jennifer found out about the beating in the first place. (Her son’s black eye and broken nose might also have been a good clue.)
A few months ago, Austin rallied around a victim of a hate crime. A local dentist did reconstructive surgery to fix the nine (!) teeth that were beaten out of a victim’s mouth.
Milk
It is unfortunate these days in order to get anything done even the government agency, one needs to garner tons of publicity to shame the authorities into action.
Cam
Just be thankful for social media. Remember, before things like facebook were around, the local sheriff would have simply made up some story that the kid had started it, or they would have falsely charged him with something phony to get his parents to drop any legal inquiries.
pressuredrop
@Cam:
Yes, thank the stupidity of Facebook over-sharers.
(It’s still a shit company and website.)
Anyway, it’s also kind of sad that this particular mother is considered ‘awesome’ for doing something that every parent should be willing to do. Which is not a slight on her at all– it’s just sad that so few people do the right thing that somebody doing the right thing seems downright unusual.
onthemark
@Cam: You’re usually one of the most sensible people here, but that’s a weird argument. Facebook CAUSES so much anti-gay bullying that would never have happened without it. And we’re supposed to be thankful that *maybe,* *maybe* it helps catch the bullies after the bashings? Yikes. Well, maybe.
I’m thankful that at least this poor kid is home schooled so he doesn’t get bullied daily in the useless “educational” incarceration system.
manjoguy
“…Federal Investigation…” as in Eric Hinton Holder’s Department of Injustice?! Unless someone in the suit is non-white, why would Holder act? Holder is a despicable politician.
Cagnazzo82
@manjoguy: Turn off Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and actually do some research into what Holder’s done for gays.
Cam
@onthemark: Are you kidding? Why do you think all of these stories are even being heard now?
Previously the media would NEVER cover gay stories. Now they are getting out there.
Let’s look at another example, look at Ferguson Mo. Do you think that it’s all of a sudden that cops are overusing authority? All of those cell phone videos of cops that keep getting them in trouble for illegally harassing people being posted to Facebook and other sources, do you think that all of that behavior just SUDDENLY started happening? No, it’s just becoming noticeable because there is an outlet to post and publicize that type of behavior.
As for your statement of “Facebook CAUSES so much anti-gay bullying that would never have happened without it.”…..
It would have happened, it would have just been notes in school and beatings behind the gym. Now there is PROOF because they are doing those things online, meaning that once again, when parents go in to school or the police, they can’t brush it under the rug because now, thanks to social media there is proof of what the bullies are doing.
School bullying isn’t new, but the reason it is making news is because now the schools and police can’t claim it isn’t happening because of the evidence.
That is where my opinion on this comes from.
onthemark
@Cam: mm, maybe. I just find the whole thing super-creepy. When I was bullied it was JUST at school, the “beatings behind the gym” etc. But that was that. At least when I got home I was safe & could relax. The bullying didn’t follow me home 24/7 via electronic devices.
“Now there is PROOF because they are doing those things online,” well, that assumes there are parents AND administrators who actually give a sh*t, which is far from a given in every case. Plus there is always a lot of whining about how the bullies’ free speech rights are supposedly being violated if the school tries to punish them for posting nasty FB sh*t in after-school time.
Btw, nothing much is happening to the cops either. Yes their behavior gets exposed, and so what, they still don’t pay any penalty for it. Ferguson might not be a good example for you to use!
Cam
@onthemark:
I get what you are saying, but it doesn’t matter if the admins or the police don’t do anything, with the proof right there, the courts and the state police/FBI etc… now have black and white proof that forces the schools and police to act.
I think it is sort of like what African American friends go through, i.e. better to have a rac-ist be upfront and stupidly say something in writing or in public because then you have proof and can do something. If there is no proof, they can hurt you, fire you etc… and there is no recourse.
DarkZephyr
@Cam: Plus we, as a nation, can vilify the as*holes even if the law never does get around to doing anything about it. I kinda love it for that alone.
@pressuredrop: “Anyway, it’s also kind of sad that this particular mother is considered ‘awesome’ for doing something that every parent should be willing to do. Which is not a slight on her at all– it’s just sad that so few people do the right thing that somebody doing the right thing seems downright unusual.”
So would it have been better if the headline had read “Mediocre Mom wants investigation into Son’s Gay Bashing”? or “Average Mom Fights Homophobia against Son”, etc?
onthemark
@Cam: That’s pretty contradictory. You say “but it doesn’t matter if the admins or the police don’t do anything,” and later in the very same sentence you say we “now have black and white proof that forces the schools and police to act.”
So either they “don’t do anything,” or they “act”? It doesn’t necessarily “force” anyone to do anything at all.
Cam
@onthemark:
I’m not sure if you are purposely trying to be obtuse or just didn’t read my comment clearly. I said that the courts and the FBI now have the proof that forces the schools and the police to act. You seem to have left out that part when you typed out what I “Said”.
i.e. with the proof there, large numbers of courts have forced schools to pay off victims, or alter their polices. State Police or the Federal Dept. of Justice have moved in and forced local police forces to act or have pulled the cases out of the local jurisdictions to be handled at the federal level. All because of proof from sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube.
onthemark
@Cam: You shouldn’t see social media as an unmitigated boon in these situations. There have been a lot of well-publicized cases where kids were bullied on FB (+ school) and didn’t even tell their parent(s) before they killed themselves, or didn’t make clear how bad it was (this may seem strange to never-bullied people but I can easily imagine it), or one can tell that the parent(s) didn’t think it was a big deal (not that they’re anti-gay, just didn’t think it was a big deal). This leaves totally aside the parents who are explicitly anti-gay and just don’t give a sh*t, who must be legion.
Even in the best-case scenario you describe, the parent(s) need to be totally on board and endlessly committed – far from a given in every case – AND probably hire a decent lawyer. Plus the school administrators AND police would need to get past their traditional view that “it’s just kids, that’s how kids are” – again, leaving out any explicitly anti-gay prejudices, which are legion.
To address the point raised by pressuredrop & DarkZephyr – yes, it will generally be “Awesome” Mom who goes to the trouble of a FEDERAL INVESTIGATION. Average Mom and Mediocre Mom won’t go to such lengths. (And even Awesome Mom here, who home-schools her kid, has the luxury of not needing to deal with stupid school administrators.)
But okay, we’re stuck with FB etc. and there’s no point in me being a Luddite. So I’ll go along with you and pretend there’s something good about it!