Tag Archives: kidnap

Viral

3 get plea deals in anti-gay crime in NYC

Leave a comment

Three reputed members of a New York City street gang accused of brutal anti-gay attacks on a teenage recruit and two others pleaded guilty to lesser charges this week after prosecutors said the victims wanted to avoid testifying at a trial.

The three members of the Latin King Goonies were initially charged with crimes including aggravated sexual abuse and assault as a hate crime, gang assault and burglary, prosecutors said. Their pleas June 20 ranged from burglary to attempted assault.

“The pleas were offered after lengthy consultation with the victims who wished to avoid having to testify, which might have had the effect of victimizing them again,” the District Attorney’s Office in the Bronx said in a statement. “Assistant District Attorney Theresa Gottleib told the court the people believed the pleas serve the interest of justice from society’s perspective as well as that of the victims.”

Prosecutors said that in October 2010, members of the gang went berserk after hearing a rumor that one of their new recruits, a 17-year-old from the Bronx, was gay. The teen was stripped, beaten and sexually assaulted with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a 30-year-old man who lives a few blocks away, prosecutors and police said at the time.

Then, the group grabbed a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him, too, authorities said. Finally, they invited the 30-year-old to an abandoned house they used as a hangout, telling him they were having a party. When he arrived, they burned, beat and tortured him for hours, and the attack included sexually assaulting him with a miniature baseball bat, prosecutors said.

At the time, the case was one in a spate of alleged anti-gay attacks across the region, and it sparked horror and outrage among city lawmakers and the public who demanded justice.

Ten people were initially arrested, but charges against three were dropped. On June 20, David Rivera, 24, pleaded guilty to the most serious charge of burglary, admitting he went into the homes of two of the victims, flashed what appeared to be a gun and took cash, credit cards and electronics from the home. He will be sentenced to 13 years when he is sentenced July 29. His lawyer didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

Nelson Falu, 20, pleaded guilty to robbery, admitting he stole from one of the victims after threatening them with a baseball bat. He will serve seven years behind bars when he is sentenced Aug. 9. His lawyer didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

Elmer Confresi, 26, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted gang assault after admitting he injured one of the victims held in the basement. He will be sentenced July 29 to four years.

“He was minimally involved,” said his attorney Patrick Bruno. “I think the district attorney was equitable. They made the distinction.”

Charges against four others are still pending.

National

Man recants claim he was kidnapped by church

Leave a comment

A man who accused a North Carolina church of holding him against his will and abusing him because he’s gay has recanted. He says he lied about the church violence and about being gay.

Twenty-two-year-old Michael Lowry told The Associated Press he was sorry for making accusations against the Word of Faith Fellowship.  

In a prior interview with AP, Lowry had said he fled after the church confined him to a locked building on church grounds because he was gay. He also had claimed that from August 2011 to November 2011 he was taken to the building and beaten and abused, part of his “ex-gay” treatment.

Rutherfordton County Sheriff’s Detective Sergeant Jamie Keever said he has met with Lowry and the investigation is continuing. Lowry could face charges associated with filing a false report.

The district attorney presented the case to a grand jury, but it’s unclear what will happen next. 

Lowry filed his complaint against the church last year, with support from a group called Faith in America, which said Lowry was the victim of a hate crime.

Lowry’s was not the first complaint against the church that was founded in 1979 by Sam and Jane Whaley. The church has been accused for years of enforcing extensive control over congregants.

National

UPDATE. Man recants claim he was kidnapped by church

Leave a comment

A man who accused a North Carolina church of holding him against his will and abusing him because he’s gay has recanted. He says he lied about the church violence and about being gay.

Twenty-two-year-old Michael Lowry told The Associated Press he was sorry for making accusations against the Word of Faith Fellowship.  

In a prior interview with AP, Lowry had said he fled after the church confined him to a locked building on church grounds because he was gay. He also had claimed that from August 2011 to November 2011 he was taken to the building and beaten and abused, part of his “ex-gay” treatment.

Rutherfordton County Sheriff’s Detective Sergeant Jamie Keever said he has met with Lowry and the investigation is continuing. Lowry could face charges associated with filing a false report.

The district attorney presented the case to a grand jury, but it’s unclear what will happen next. 

Lowry filed his complaint against the church last year, with support from a group called Faith in America, which said Lowry was the victim of a hate crime.

Lowry’s was not the first complaint against the church that was founded in 1979 by Sam and Jane Whaley. The church has been accused for years of enforcing extensive control over congregants.

Viral

Right-winger promotes abducting children from gay parents

Leave a comment

Right-wing pundit Bryan Fischer has called for “an Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.”

Fischer, suggested such a network in a tweet on Aug. 8, as a minister went on trial for helping a woman and child leave the United States. The woman had abducted her daughter from a lesbian relationship and faces a kidnapping charge.

Fischer, in a second tweet on Aug. 8, said, “Head of Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households goes on trial.”

The Human Rights Campaign responded to Fischer’s tweets in a blog post: “Fischer’s call for kidnapping children from same-sex partners is not only offensive, but a harmful mischaracterization of families that struggle daily to provide loving and safe home environments despite significant legal, financial and dignitary inequality.”

Fischer is the director of issues analysis for the American Family Association. He hosts the talk radio program “Focal Point” on American Family Radio and posts on the AFA-run blog Rightly Concerned.

The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes the AFA, based in Tupelo, Miss., as a hate group.

The SPLC’s profile of Fischer includes quotes calling for recriminalization of homosexuality, blaming gays for the rise of Hitler and treating homosexuality like drug addiction.

He’s also advocated barring Muslims from coming to the United States and said Native Americans are mired in poverty because they refuse to accept Christianity and “the superior culture” of the newcomers to the New World.

In the minister’s trial taking place in Vermont, prosecutors allege that Kenneth Miller helped Lisa Miller and Isabella, then 7, flee the country to avoid sharing custody with Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven, Vt.

The defense says the 46-year-old Kenneth Miller from Stuarts Draft, Va., believed Lisa Miller, who is not related, had full custody of her daughter.

The trial began Aug. 8 with jury selection and continues today. If convicted, Kenneth Miller could be sentenced to a maximum prison term of three years.

Lisa Miller and Jenkins entered a civil union in Vermont in 2000. Lisa Miller gave birth to her daughter in 2002. The couple later broke up, and Lisa Miller returned to her native Virginia.

A custody battle ensued in both Vermont and Virginia courts, with the supreme courts in both states eventually ruling the disagreement should be handled as a parental rights case under Vermont law.

Two months after Lisa Miller left the United States, a Vermont judge transferred custody to Jenkins. The current whereabouts of Lisa Miller and her now 10-year-old daughter are not known.

On Aug. 9, prosecutors presented records for a cellphone of Virginia businessman Philip Zodhiates as evidence of Lisa Miller’s movements from Virginia to Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 21, 2009. They said calls were made between Zodhiates’ cellphone and Kenneth Miller’s cellphone during the trip to Buffalo.

According to previous testimony, a Mennonite pastor met Lisa Miller and her daughter in Canada and he drove them to the Toronto airport. The records then track Lisa Miller from Canada to Mexico City to Nicaragua, the prosecutors told jurors this week.

In court documents, prosecutors say that Lisa Miller and Isabella stayed for a time at a Nicaraguan beach house owned by Zodhiates and that Zodhiates sent the mother and child, who were not using their real names, a care package.

Viral

2 Kentucky men indicted for anti-gay kidnapping, assault

Leave a comment

Two Harlan County, Ky., men were indicted on April 12 in connection with the kidnapping and assault of a gay man.

A federal grand jury in London, Ky., returned a three-count indictment charging David Jason Jenkins, 37, and Anthony Ray Jenkins, 20, for kidnapping and assaulting Kevin Pennington, and for conspiring with each other and with other unnamed individuals to commit the kidnapping.

The indictment charges the men with committing a hate crime in violation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction to include certain assaults motivated by someone’s sexual orientation.

The case marks the first federal hate crime charging a violation of the sexual orientation provision of the statute.

The indictment alleges that on April 4, 2011, the two defendants kidnapped and assaulted Kevin Pennington because of Pennington’s sexual orientation.

According to the indictment, the defendants enlisted two women to trick Pennington into getting into a truck with the defendants. The defendants allegedly drove Pennington to a secluded area of the Kingdom Come State Park in Kentucky and assaulted him.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum penalty of life in prison for each charge.

The Shepard-Byrd law, enacted in 2009, criminalizes acts of physical violence causing bodily injury motivated by any person’s actual or perceived race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability. 

FBI agents Anthony Sankey and Mike Brown investigated the case, which is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. Attorney Hydee Hawkins and trial attorney Angie Cha with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Download a PDF of the current issue of Wisconsin Gazette and join our Facebook community.