Nearly one-quarter of community college students who took part in a survey admitted to harassing people they thought were gay. In December 1995, lesbian activists and life partners, Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill were shot to death in Oregon. Their killer confessed to murdering them in part because they were lesbians. In October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year old gay student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally beaten unconscious, tied to a fence, and left to die in freezing weather by two men because he was gay. A mentally disabled man from Port Monmouth was kidnaped by a group of nine men and women and was tortured for three hours, then dumped with a pillowcase over his head.
Prosecutors believe the attack was motivated by disability bias.
Two days after her second wedding anniversary in 1990, an Arkansas woman was found stabbed approximately 130 times in the breasts, vagina, buttocks, eyes, and forehead. Her husband has been charged with the murder. In May 1988, on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, a horrific shooting attack left 28 year old Rebecca Wight dead. One Woman s Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence. Contact your Congressmember and urge their support for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act .