Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 16:04:30 -0700 From: Jean Richter Subject: 6/29/98 P.E.R.S.O.N. Project news, pt. 2 1. KY: Accused student killer says he was victim of anti-gay abuse ==================================================================== From: SARATOGANY@aol.com Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 10:32:04 EDT To: jjmyers@skidmore.edu Subject: Gay Bashing and School Shootings Msg fwd and by: the Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS, PO Box 2345, Malta, NY 12020 My strong suspicions about the relevance of gay bashing in the recent (1996-1998) school shootings, is beginning to surface. The article below notes that gay bashing was at least in part an element in the West Paducah, KY school shooting. In Moses Lake, WA, Feb. 2, 1996, a male student shot and killed, in a 9th grade math class, the teacher and two students. As I caught the end of a Court TV sentencing hearing, the father of one of the victims stated “ If you thought being called a fag was a problem, wait till you get in prison and they call you sweety”. I am trying to obtain a copy from Court TV and view the entire program. I believe the title is “Killing in the Classroom”. A recent murder case (not on school property) in Northamptom, MA, was the result of gay bashing in school. A 16 year boy was stabbed to death by a 15 year boy. Newspapers report that the 15 year old was frequently gay bash, taunted and assaulted by the 16 year old victim of the stabbing. It is very hard to obtain this kind of gay bashing information and I have a feeling it plays more of a role than we are told. To my knowledge, the perpetrators in the two cases above and the one below were not gay. This falls in line with reports that indicate more non-gay students are gay bashed than those who are GLBT. If any of you have additional information on these or other similar cases, please let me know. John Myers =================================== THE LETTER, June 1998 Louisville, KY (E-MAIL: WillNich@aol.com) Killer Upset By Gay Perceptions One of several reasons why a West Kentucky teenager opened fire and killed three of his classmates last year at a high school in West Paducah may have been his inability to cope with taunts that he was gay. In a mental evaluation conducted for his defense team, Michael Carneal, 15, noted that he was upset with some of his classmates' anti-gay slurs. He is not gay, Carneal told psychologist Dewey Cornell. Anti-gay rhetoric is commonplace in American and British public schools, which tend to look the other way when students complain. Though recent successful lawsuits against a couple of school systems have helped redefine the problem, teachers and principals remain woefully undertrained in how to deal with gay and lesbian student issues. From: SARATOGANY@aol.com Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 09:26:14 EDT To: jjmyers@skidmore.edu, SARATOGANY@aol.com Subject: PADUCAH SUN :Gay implication spurred teasing then shooting Msg fwd by: the Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS PO Box 2345, Malta, NY 12020 THE PADUCAH SUN (KY) June 24,1998 Gay implication spurred teasing: Carneal BY BILL BARTLEMAN THE PADUCAH SUN A gossip column in the Heath Middle School newspaper implying that Michael Carneal was gay fueled constant teasing and had a profound effect on the mental state of the teen charged with the Dec. 1 shooting at Heath High School, according to Carneal's psychological evaluations. The "Rumor Has It" column, published in the fall of 1996 when Carneal was in eighth grade, said "Michael C. and ... (another male student) have feelings for each other," according to a psychological evaluation prepared by Dr. Diane Schetky, a nationally known child psychiatrist. In separate interviews, Carneal, 15, told Schetky and Dr. Dewey Cornell, a psychologist, he never felt attracted to other males and doesn't believe he displayed homosexual tendencies. However, months after the column was published - and even when he entered high school last fall - students continued to harass him and call him gay. "I asked him what really got to him," Schetky said in her written evaluation of Carneal. "He replied, 'Saying I was gay' and described how they printed this in the school newspaper in eighth grade and that everyone had been talking about it." Heath Middle School Principal Butch Edwards said he doesn't recall the newspaper reference to Carneal and doesn't remember anyone complaining about it or anything else that was published in the "Rumor Has It" column. He said the paper was published by a journalism class under the guidance of an English teacher. The school stopped publishing a newspaper later in the 1996-97 school year because the journalism class was discontinued. The teacher who taught the class in 1996 was not available for comment Thursday. However, the teacher who advised the newspaper in earlier years said she always contacted students to get permission to publish their names in the column. Items were routinely submitted anonymously and in most cases involved student romances. The teacher of the journalism class when it was stopped was still teaching at Heath Middle School in 1996 but doesn't recall reading the gay reference to Carneal. Carneal has been charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder in connection with the Dec. 1 shooting. His trial is scheduled for Oct. 5. Schetky has concluded that Carneal suffers from dysthymia, which is chronic depression accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem, and Schizotypal Personality Disorder, which involves people who have difficulty socializing and who display oddities in thinking, communicating and perceiving. The reference in the school paper to being gay and the teasing that following appears to have contributed to Carneal's mental state, according to Cornell, the psychologist. "Mike detailed extensive harassment at school in recent years in which he was called gay, faggot, nerd, geek" and other graphic and vulgar names, Schetky said. "He stated that he was also spat upon, hit, put in headlocks and threatened with violence. The harassment became particularly pernicious following publication of the 'Rumor Has It' column in eighth grade, and he estimated he was then called gay almost daily." In his interview with Cornell, Carneal said the gossip column "made me feel pretty bad. Everybody read and laughed about it." He said that the reference and teasing that followed "stuck in my head," and that he "even started to believe it." Carneal told the psychologist that no male had ever made a sexual advance toward him or had taken advantage of him. Cornell wrote that Carneal "denies sexual feelings for males or even being confused because of admiring or looking up to a man." The report also said that Carneal told about having a girlfriend in ninth grade but that they had stopped doing things together last October after he wrote in a friend's journal that he liked, Nicole Hadley, who was one of the victims of the Dec. 1 shooting. Carneal said he wasn't interested in having a serious relationship with any girls but enjoyed their friendship. "(He) Said he has always been shy about girls but not shy about making friends with strangers," Cornell wrote. "(He) Did not feel he was ready for sex." He said he never pursued anything more than a friendship with Hadley, because other boys liked her and he didn't want to be in competition with them. However, he said she was his "best friend" because she tried to stop him from doing things that were wrong and because she treated him with kindness. Carneal also said he didn't aim at or intend to shoot Hadley on Dec. 1, but said she just happened to be in his line of fire. He thought that if people were shot, they would only be hurt and not killed. Carneal told the psychologist that his original intent of taking the guns to school was to brandish one of them to get attention and respect from his fellow students. Carneal said his fantasy was to threaten people with the gun and take control of principal's office and use the public address system to order everyone out of the school. He felt that after he relinquished control of the school, students would respect him and stop the endless teasing and harassment. However, after going into the lobby of the school and seeing other students, he said changed his plan and decided to load the .22 handgun and fire several shots to scare people. He was asked by Cornell why he didn't fire shots into the ceiling instead of into the crowd of students: "(He) Said he was tired of people making fun of him (and) couldn't stand it anymore. If (he) shot one of them or scared them all, 'they would leave me alone.'" Carneal told Cornell that as he contemplated removing the gun from his backpack on the morning of Dec. 1, he pictured people saying mean things to him, which made him mad. "I originally though about scaring people but the more I though about it, the more I wanted to make it worse. (The) More I though about it, (the) more I wanted to do to them," Carneal told the psychologist. Carneal decided to shoot into the crowd after "thinking about all the things done to me all morning, all the names they called me, putting that I was gay in the newspaper, calling me stupid, nerd, geek ... pushing me around ... because I was not too strong." Carneal said he didn't think he would kill anybody because he had been told that a shot from a .22 handgun was not powerful enough to kill. He said he wanted to "hurt them a little but ... but not kill anybody. I was mad enough but didn't want to (kill anyone)." ======================================== This AP article does not specifically mention gay bashing. However, the psychiatric evaluations are indicative of what GLBT and those percieved/rumored to be GLBT, suffer. ========================== Teen May Plead Guilty in Shooting .c The Associated Press PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - The 15-year-old boy accused of killing three girls and wounding five other students as they prayed at their high school will say he is mentally ill and plead guilty in hopes of getting a lenient sentence, his lawyer said. Michael Carneal is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 5 on three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder. The teen-ager is accused of carrying a pistol, shotguns and rifles into Heath High School and opening fire in the lobby as classmates ended an informal prayer meeting. ``It is the intention of Michael ... to plead guilty to the charges and state affirmatively he is a person with a diagnosable mental illness,'' defense lawyer Thomas Osborne said. He said Carneal hopes to get a lenient sentence because he is mentally ill. A day after Osborne made his remarks, a judge issued an order Wednesday prohibiting lawyers from talking publicly about the Dec. 1 shootings. Both prosecutors and the defense have hired psychiatrists to evaluate Carneal, who was a freshman at the time of the shootings. The judge has not determined if he is competent to stand trial. Prosecutor Tim Kaltenbach said he will not agree to a plea of guilty but mentally ill and will seek the maximum punishment: life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The families of three slain girls released copies of reports from two defense psychiatrists. Both reports said he was tired of being teased and confided that a gun he took to school made him feel powerful. And both said he felt pressured by the accomplishments of his older sister, who had been class valedictorian. Dianne Schetky, a forensic psychiatrist from Rockport, Maine, said Carneal was not taking medicine and had not been diagnosed with a mental illness at the time of the shootings. Schetky diagnosed Carneal with dysthymia, a chronic depression accompanied by feelings of low self-esteem and worthlessness. She also said he showed traits of a ``schizotypal'' personality disorder that results in social and emotional detachment, and that he showed signs of paranoia. But her report adds that Carneal, ``although mentally ill, did have an appreciation of the criminality of his behavior and the capacity to restrain himself.'' AP-NY-06-25-98 0451EDT ----------------------------------------- Jean Richter -- richter@eecs.berkeley.edu The P.E.R.S.O.N. Project (Public Education Regarding Sexual Orientation Nationally) CHECK OUT OUR INFO-LOADED WEB PAGE AT: http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/