Within days of his first entering prison, the 23-year-old Rodney claimed he was the victim of three separate sexual assaults, involving five different inmates. His account suggests that far from being a paradise, prison for gay men can be a living hell. He described a litany of brutal rapes, assaults, beatings and, eventually, the total abandonment of his male identity as his only means of survival in the hyper-masculine and often homophobic prison environment.
One young man named Rodney, imprisoned for fraud and check-forging, sent me a detailed account of his life so far in prison.
The reality of life in prison for homosexuals and transgender individuals does not appear to reflect this myth. His death sentence was later overturned (mostly because Burdine's public defender had slept through much of his trial), but the homophobic thinking – that prison is some kind of paradise for gay men – lingers on. After 17 minutes of deliberation, the jury obliged and sentenced Burdine to die.
There are too many people telling me that they don't want their children riding SEPTA, too many adults saying they no longer take public transportation, and there has to be a level of action.I n 1984, when Calvin Burdine was awaiting sentencing for allegedly stabbing his gay lover to death, the prosecuting attorney encouraged the jury in his closing remarks to award Burdine the death penalty, rather than life in prison, on the grounds that sending a gay man to prison was akin to sending a kid to a candy store. Philadelphia City Councilmember David Oh called for better security on SEPTA trains: "We need uniformed police officers there to let people know who to go to if something happens and that they are safe. “We are the city of love, we are not the city of hate and her kid didn’t do anything wrong, and her kid didn’t even know the girls,” the mother said via a translator. The aftermath: No serious injuries were reported, but the mother of the young boy told CBS in Chinese that he was attacked because he was of Asian descent. The mother of one of the suspects turned her daughter in after seeing the video go viral. "She stepped up and told the girls to stop saying what they were saying. "She was a hero," Nestel told reporters about the female victim. While Nestel added that the attack was based on “ethnicity” and “ethnic slurs” were hurled at the victims, the incident was “unprovoked.” The four female suspects in the video, aged 13-16, await charges, including ethnic intimidation, aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and terroristic threats, SEPTA Transit Police Chief Thomas Nestel said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon. She was rushed to a hospital where she was treated for a laceration. The female victim flagged down SEPTA Transit Police and notified them of the assault at 3:45 p.m., Fox reported. The same assailants reportedly poured a smoothie on a group of Asian male students and called them racial slurs. The attack caught on video follows an incident that happened on an express train in Olney on Tuesday. It is unclear what happened next, but the incident was reported to the SEPTA police. Other members of the assailant group follow suit and begin kicking and punching her as she lies on the ground.Ī man eventually intervenes before the video cuts off. One of the attackers lunges at her, hitting her head against the train doors in the process. A female senior student who appears to be Asian or Asian American then comes into the shot and attempts to stop the assault, but she immediately becomes the next target. The widely shared video shows the attackers verbally and physically assaulting a teenage male freshman from Central High School. Shocking video shows a group of female youths, one in a hijab, brutally beating two passive Asian people on a SEPTA train in Philadelphia on Wednesday near Erie Station.