Friday, July 06, 2007
The Wages of Hate - Newsweek
David Ritcheson was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted in 2006. This spring, he testified before Congress in favor of stiffer hate-crimes laws, and seemed to be putting his life back together. He didn't quite make it. David's story.
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Then Tuck and his sidekick, Keith Robert Turner, spent the next several hours beating and torturing Ritcheson while shouting “White power!” according to court testimony. They stripped him, burned his skin with cigarettes, poured bleach on his wounds, rammed the end of a patio umbrella into his anus and kicked it with steel-toed boots deep enough to rupture his internal organs, according to witness testimony. They started to carve a swastika in his chest, but some of the onlookers thought that was going too far. Ritcheson told members of Congress that God had spared him the memory of what happened that night, but “today I still bear that scar on my chest like a scarlet letter.” Tuck and Turner, who pleaded not guilty, were convicted of aggravated sexual assault; Tuck received a life sentence, while Turner received a 90-year sentence.
...
Yet Ritcheson did seem to be slowly mending himself. Though he refused counseling, his family and friends didn’t insist on it because he appeared to be recovering so well, both physically and mentally, says Leon, the family attorney, who grew close to Ritcheson in the last year. “David was very upbeat, in spite of everything that happened to him,” says Leon. “He was a very caring guy, and he wanted everyone around him to think that he was happy.”
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Though he hated people associating him with the violence unleashed on him and “he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him,” says Leon, he chose to make such a public appearance because of his commitment to strengthening state and federal hate-crime laws. His own case was never tried as a hate crime, since it didn’t fit the federal statutes and under Texas criminal law, first-degree felonies are exempt from hate-crimes provisions. ...
David Ritcheson was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted in 2006. This spring, he testified before Congress in favor of stiffer hate-crimes laws, and seemed to be putting his life back together. He didn't quite make it. David's story.
...
Then Tuck and his sidekick, Keith Robert Turner, spent the next several hours beating and torturing Ritcheson while shouting “White power!” according to court testimony. They stripped him, burned his skin with cigarettes, poured bleach on his wounds, rammed the end of a patio umbrella into his anus and kicked it with steel-toed boots deep enough to rupture his internal organs, according to witness testimony. They started to carve a swastika in his chest, but some of the onlookers thought that was going too far. Ritcheson told members of Congress that God had spared him the memory of what happened that night, but “today I still bear that scar on my chest like a scarlet letter.” Tuck and Turner, who pleaded not guilty, were convicted of aggravated sexual assault; Tuck received a life sentence, while Turner received a 90-year sentence.
...
Yet Ritcheson did seem to be slowly mending himself. Though he refused counseling, his family and friends didn’t insist on it because he appeared to be recovering so well, both physically and mentally, says Leon, the family attorney, who grew close to Ritcheson in the last year. “David was very upbeat, in spite of everything that happened to him,” says Leon. “He was a very caring guy, and he wanted everyone around him to think that he was happy.”
...
Though he hated people associating him with the violence unleashed on him and “he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him,” says Leon, he chose to make such a public appearance because of his commitment to strengthening state and federal hate-crime laws. His own case was never tried as a hate crime, since it didn’t fit the federal statutes and under Texas criminal law, first-degree felonies are exempt from hate-crimes provisions. ...
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