Robbers know that men who have sex with men are an easy target: promise them sex and lure them to a secluded spot. In how many other instances could a robber easily persuade a stranger and potential victim to accompany him to a convenient location? When such robberies happen, what is the bright idea of classifying them as hate crimes? Sure, the victim was selected because he happened to be a male homosexual/bisexual, but he wasn’t selected because the robber had anything against men who have sex with men but because they can be robbed with minimal hassles. Such elementary reasoning is lost upon some people.
Consider the case of Anthony Fortunato, Ilye Shurov, John Fox and Gary Timmons. They were convicted last month of a hate crime because they lured a homosexual male, Michael Sandy, by promising him sex, though their intent was to rob him of marijuana. The robbery went awry and Sandy ended up dead. Sandy was lured to Plumb beach (NY; also referred as gay beach) by Fortunato, but when the quartet tried to rob him, he ran into traffic on the Belt Parkway and was fatally struck by a hit-and-run SUV driver.
During the trial, it turned out that Fortunato was a homosexual himself:
DiChiara said his client has been arranging sexual rendezvous with men through the Internet since he was 17. Investigators recovered a cache of homoerotic images and messages from his computer.
The prosecutor, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, said the plot was hatched by Fortunato, who told his friends, "You could always get a gay guy to meet you," and trolled a chat room called "Brooklyn Man 4 Man" for a victim. Fortunato boasted he had ripped off a gay man he had lured to a motel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, she said.
So it should be clear that the quartet had nothing against Sandy’s homosexuality. They just picked him because of the convenience factor, yet all four were convicted of a hate crime!
Shurov got 17-1/2 years, Fortunato 7-21 years, Fox 13-21 years and Timmons 4 years (plea deal, in exchange for testifying against Fox and Fortunato) in prison.
Most “hate crimes” against homosexuals comprise of verbal harassment. And then we have crimes like Sandy’s death classified as hate crimes. I have even come across reports of sexual assault of men who have sex with men classified as hate crimes. Again, when is it easy for a rapist to get a potential victim to accompany him to a desired place? When the rapist happens to be a male homosexual. A plausible hate crime sexual assault against a male homosexual would comprise of a homosexual-hating heterosexual man stripping a male homosexual and forcibly inserting an artificial object into his rectum, but this is an unlikely scenario because the haters would typically prefer to beat up homosexuals.
Posted by Admin on Friday, December 21, 2007 in General
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Here is a related case, showing again why robbers target homosexuals...convenience. Dislike of homosexuals is usually irrelevant, and irrelevance means that even though dislike of homosexuals is present in some cases, the robbery is not motivated by a dislike for homosexuals.
Minority youth target gays
15 June 2007AMSTERDAM – Youth of ethnic background, primary from Moroccan families, are regularly hanging about well-known gay meeting places in Amsterdam in order to rob men there of their money. They also sometimes make appointments online, posing as homosexual, to rob them in their homes once they are invited over.
The victims of these crimes are often too embarrassed to report the incidents. “Often these are bisexual men who are married,” says Pierre van der Steen of the police network aimed at promoting the rights of gays and lesbians, Roze in Blauw (RIB), told the Telegraaf.
Some parks in the capital are danger areas, though the youth also often wait outside many of the gay bars in Amsterdam.
“We have recently arrested Moroccan and Pakistani suspects near the Oeverlanden. They confessed to having robbed six men, while only one of these men had reported the incident to police,” adds Marja Lust of RIB.
Another homosexual man was assaulted in the Vondel park last Saturday by six Moroccan youth. He told his story to the newspaper, but later asked that it not be published out of fear for reprisals. “Out of the blue I was just beaten and kicked,” he says. “There is a great deal of anger among this group of young people and I have no idea where it is coming from.”
The police want to get more of an idea of how widespread the problem is and sometimes send undercover officers to gay meeting places. “We want to encourage these men to report this kind of crime, says Van der Steen. “They can do that anonymously, because we understand it can be difficult to come to the police.”
“People must stop being afraid to report these crimes, because we can’t do anything about it if we don’t know about it. We do notice that we are receiving more complaints from one year to the next, but we still fear this is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Marja Lust.
Posted by Erik on January 06, 2008 at 04:04 AM | #
I think what your missing is that homosexual men are being targeted, just as if it had been a woman this happened to it would also have been classified as a hate crime.
But I wonder what your true motives are for this article. After all, this man was not simply robbed, he DIED. No matter he dies by being hit by a car trying to flee from his robbers, there wouldnt have been a need to flee from them if they hadnt tried to rob him. Classified as a hate crime, you bet. Why? By accounts of the article, premeditation. He would seek out homosexuals, and had done so more than once, to rob them. He was the victim of a VIOLENT crime, why would you not consider this anything less than a hate crime?
hate crime
–noun a crime, usually violent, motivated by prejudice or intolerance toward a member of a gender, racial, religious, or social group.
Also called bias crime.
hate crime
n. A crime motivated by prejudice against a social group: “[His]murders were hate crimes targeting victims by gender” (Jane Caputi and Diana E.H. Russell).
American Psychological Association (APA):
hate crime. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved May 09, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hate crime
Chicago Manual Style (CMS):
hate crime. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hate crime (accessed: May 09, 2008).
Modern Language Association (MLA):
“hate crime.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 09 May. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hate crime>.
Posted by Robert Williamson on May 10, 2008 at 04:05 AM | #