Is This A Hate Crime?

Hate crimes take many forms. Some are physical attacks, some are verbal threats, and even some are causing other to do something decremental or put them in harms ways such as reporting a false crime.

Melbourne police call report of sexual assault by transgender student at school 'unfounded'
Florida Today
By Finch Walker and Bailey Gallion
September 4, 2022


After a nearly three-week long investigation, Melbourne Police said in a report finalized on Friday that allegations of a transgender student assaulting a girl in the bathroom at Johnson Middle School were unfounded.

Over the course of the investigation, police spoke to administrators at Johnson Middle School, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, and the Department of Children and Families, all of whom said no reports regarding a sexual assaults at the school had been made.

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, and the parents that police spoke with were unable to give specific information, saying that they had heard the story of the alleged assault from multiple sources, including other parents and an unnamed teacher who did not work at Johnson Middle School.

Brevard Public Schools vehemently denied that any incident occurred at the middle school after Fine publicly called for Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz to investigate a potential sexual assault at Johnson Middle School on Aug. 11. Fine did not have firsthand knowledge of any assault, but said parents had reached out to his office. He blamed BPS' practice of allowing transgender students to use bathrooms of the gender that they identify with for making such an incident possible.

Of course the rumors of a cover up are spreading!

Police traced the story of the Johnson Middle School assault to a conversation between retired BPS teacher Karen Parrish and a teacher who did not work at Johnson, then closed the case as unfounded when Parrish did not provide the name of the current teacher and no witnesses came forward.

Any teacher with knowledge of a sexual assault would have been legally obligated to report the incident to the Florida Department of Children and Families, but according to Melbourne Police Department, no such report was made.

But that didn’t stop the haters!

Police spoke to a BCSO major who serves as part of BPS School District Security, the report said. The major told them BPS had not been made aware of allegations of an assault at Johnson Middle School over the summer until Fine sent the letter to FDOE, adding that the only incident he knew of was an incident at Space Coast Junior/Senior High School that had been previously investigated. The incident involved a transgender student and criminal charges were not filed.

[…]

Police spoke to a BCSO major who serves as part of BPS School District Security, the report said. The major told them BPS had not been made aware of allegations of an assault at Johnson Middle School over the summer until Fine sent the letter to FDOE, adding that the only incident he knew of was an incident at Space Coast Junior/Senior High School that had been previously investigated. The incident involved a transgender student and criminal charges were not filed.

This is a tactic that the right-wing has used for a very long time creating lies. In Connecticut a person testified that trans woman was arrest for bring a child into a public bathroom, it was all over the news back in 2009/2011 time-frame. What the police found was that it was her daughter that she brought into the bathroom but the conservatives never mentioned that because it didn’t fit with their wrapped mind, in their mind trans woman = pedophile. Then there were the locker room allegation from I think Oregon which were false but it was spread all over the mainstream media.

Police closed the case as unfounded, saying no victims, suspects or witnesses had been identified and “there is no evidence to support the allegation of sexual battery against a student at (Johnson Middle School) during summer school.”

So my question is this a hate crime because lies do harm it does to the community?