By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 11/28/2009 09:05:16 PM CST
Here's something interesting I read this past week:
A 16-year-old boy, defending himself from physical abuse at the hands of his father, is arrested for domestic assault and locked up. The arrest is made in spite of evidence that the man was abusing his son because the boy was gay.
A 16-year-old transgender (male-to-female) youth is the subject of relentless harassment and abuse while in a boys' detention facility. Instead of advocating for his client's safety, the youth's lawyer argued for continued incarceration because of the youth's "nonconforming gender identity."
Staff at an undisclosed boys' detention facility refuse to accommodate a male-to-female transgender youth who refused to group-shower out of fear of being sexually assaulted. It took court action before the facility allowed the youth to shower separately.
Those are just a few thought-provoking examples from "Hidden Injustice," a report released this month on the plight of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths in the nation's juvenile justice and court system.
This group of youths may, indeed, represent the most misunderstood, abused, bullied and marginalized of any in juvenile justice. And the 165-page report, perhaps the first of its kind, provides a sobering portrait of that disparity.
"Across the country, LGBT youth contend with biased treatment by juvenile court professionals, unduly punitive responses, harmful 'treatment' programs, and unsafe conditions of confinement," states the report from the Equity Project, a San Francisco-based juvenile-rights advocacy group.
This is a report worth reading, regardless of where you stand on sexual-orientation issues. These are our kids, too, and they deserve respectful and fair treatment, especially when they are detained.
THEY WERE HURT AT HOME
Consider a recently completed Ceres Research Policy study, cited in the report, which includes Minneapolis among six juvenile-justice reform test sites:
About 13 percent of incarcerated youths surveyed nationwide identified themselves as LGBT or questioning their sexual orientation.
Compared with their "straight" peers, such youths in custody were twice as likely to be removed from their homes because someone was hurting them. They are also twice as likely to have resided in a foster or group home and more than twice as likely to be detained in a facility for running away.
"Practitioners and policymakers simply cannot continue to ignore the serious injustices LGBT youth face," said Katayoon Majd, who co-wrote the report and is staff attorney with the National Juvenile Defense Center in Washington, D.C. "Anyone who works in the system — whether a judge, defense attorney, prosecutor, probation officer or detention staff worker — has a responsibility to protect the rights, and ensure the safety, of all court-involved youth, including LGBT youth."
Among the report's findings:
LGBT youths are often detained because they lack family support.
Many jurisdictions lack alternatives to detention that are appropriate for LGBT youths.
Youths and professionals interviewed "overwhelmingly agreed" that secure facilities are particularly dangerous and hostile places for LGBT youths.
Recommendations include better training of juvenile-justice staff on LGBT youth concerns, services targeted specifically to such youths and the enforcement of anti-discrimination policies.
MANY CAN'T GO HOME
The section that disturbed me most concerned the lack of family support.
"While many families support their LGBT children, studies indicate that numerous LGBT youth of all races and ethnicities experience family rejection because of their sexual orientation," the report noted. "In particular, youth who experience conflicts at home because they are LGBT are at risk of entering the system for status offenses (particularly rebellious behavior and running away), domestic disturbances, and survival crimes, such as shoplifting and prostitution."
In cases where parents refuse to take the youths back home, "courts rely on detention as a default without considering possible alternative placements," the report also noted.
"Several defenders who were interviewed described LGBT clients who were detained solely because their families disapproved of their sexual orientation or gender identity and refused to allow them to return home," the report said. It suggests that judges place such kids in kinship or foster care rather than confinement.
With the juvenile-justice system becoming more punitive than rehabilitative in recent years, the problem will likely get worse.
So what to do? How about loving your children, regardless of sexual orientation? That would be a start.
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