A new report out this week found that violence against LGBT individuals is on the rise nationally, with certain segments of the population disproportionately affected.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’ annual report found that, in 2010, incidents of violence against LGBTQ or HIV-affected individuals were up 13 percent from the previous year.
The data drew on statistics from 17 participating antiviolence programs at LGBT agencies from 15 states. Pennsylvania did not participate.
The NCAVP also found 27 anti-LGBTQH murders, the second-highest rate since the coalition began collecting data more than a decade ago.
Lisa Gilmore, director of education and victim advocacy at Chicago’s Center on Halsted Anti-Violence Project and a member of the NCAVP governance committee, said the organization this year redeveloped its data-collection methods in order to capture as much “person-level data” as possible on victims, survivors and offenders.
NCAVP found that a disproportionate number of the total 2,503 victims and survivors were transgender people of color.
Of the murder victims, 70 percent were people of color, although this population represented 55 percent of the total incident reports. About 44 percent of murder victims were transgender women, a subset that comprised just 11 percent of the total reported cases. Non-transgender men comprised 52 percent of murder victims, about 37 percent of whom identified as gay.
Transgender individuals and people of color were also about twice as likely as non-trans white individuals to be assaulted or discriminated against, and about 1.5 times likely to face intimidation. Individuals who identified both as transgender and people of color were even more at risk for such crimes.
The majority of reported cases were filed by individuals who identified as gay (48.4 percent), followed by those who identified as lesbian (26 percent). Non-transgender men comprised about one-half of the cases, with non-transgender women making up about 32.8 percent of the cases. Most of the individuals were white (45.1 percent), followed by Latino (23.8 percent) and black (15.9 percent). Most of the victims were between the ages of 19-39.
Of the incidents, the most common was verbal harassment, with 429 reported cases, followed by discrimination, intimidation, assault without a weapon and assault with a weapon. Most incidents occurred at private residences, followed by public places.
About 35 percent of offenders were strangers to their victims, although 15 percent were a landlord, tenant or neighbor and about 10 percent were coworkers.
When it came to police assistance, 50.1 percent did not report the incident to police.
Of those who did report, more than 60 percent described police attitudes as indifferent, abusive or deterrent. The majority of offenders were white, non-transgender men between ages 19-29.
Those numbers were again higher in transgender and people of color communities: About 48 percent of transgender people of color reported police attitudes to be indifferent, compared with just 7.7 percent of non-trans white individuals.
Of the offenders, 8 percent were police officers, and NCAVP reported that trans people of color were three times more likely than other groups to experience hate violence from police.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].
