“If someone had just asked, things might have been different,” said Mateo, a closeted, gay, gang-involved teenager in juvenile detention for committing a hate crime against a gay person. Mateo (pseudonym used to protect confidentiality) had committed a robbery at gunpoint outside a gay bar while shouting homophobic slurs at his victim.
The offense was the culmination of a pattern of escalating substance abuse and anger. Mateo had been self-medicating and acting out since coming out to his parents at age 11, an experience that left him feeling rejected and alone. He internalized his parents’ disapproval and carefully guarded this secret.
Mateo’s despair and isolation only deepened after his arrest. He described a detention facility in which staff generally assumed that youth were straight and in which homophobia, biphobia and transphobia were rampant. Because of the nature of his offense and his gender-conforming presentation, the detention staff felt freer to use anti-LGBTQ slurs and jokes in his presence.
[For more of this story, written by Shannan Wilber and Shay Bilchik, go to http://jjie.org/2017/06/29/juv...t-serve-lgbtq-youth/]
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