For Immediate Release January 17, 2002 LESBIAN AND GAY ANTI-VIOLENCE ORGANIZATIONS QUESTION HANDLING OF INVESTIGATION RELATED TO BRUTAL WEST VIRGINIA BEATING
New York - Representatives from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) today expressed concern about the Huntington, West Virginia investigation into the attack of a 28 year-old man.
Late the evening of November 18, 2001, Michael Fiffe was brutally beaten in an alley near his home in Huntington. Fiffe had just left The Stonewall, a local gay bar and was walking home after stopping at a neighborhood convenience store. As he walked through the alley - a route he often took home - an SUV pulled into the alley. Three of the five passengers got out and began beating Fiffe in the head. He was found hours later the next morning. Fiffe was in a coma when admitted to the hospital having sustained serious cranial injuries. Physicians are unsure about how permanent any brain damage might be. The attack was caught on closed-circuit video by a security camera from an adjacent bank, and one of the individuals in the vehicle has come forward as a witness.
NCAVP was contacted by friends of Fiffe after Eric Paul Young, 20 , Jonathan Hensley, 21 and a juvenile suspect in Fiffe's case were released from jail on other unrelated assault charges January 12 by Magistrate Brenda Chapman after paying $110.25 each in court costs and receiving credit from Chapman for time served.
"When Michael's friends called, they had two concerns," said Clarence Patton, Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP). "First was that neither the prosecutor charged with advocating for Michael, nor the Magistrate who released these men were considering the brutality or the impetus for this crime. To date, the prosecutor has resisted classifying this as a bias-related incident, or even investigating that angle of the attack," continued Patton. Though West Virginia hate crimes statutes do not include sexual orientation, local community members are still calling for it to be part of the investigation and prosecution. "The other concern they had was that all of the individuals suspected of being involved in this attack are walking around free despite what appears to be a long history for them of violent attacks," concluded Patton.
"The fact that these young men are running around while Michael remains in a hospital bed struggling to regain basic motor, cognitive and communication skills, and his friends and associates fear for their own well-being is reprehensible," said Gloria McCauley, executive director of the Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization (BRAVO) in Columbus, Ohio. NCAVP dispatched Ms. McCauley to Huntington to offer on-site support and advocacy assistance to local community members. "From all that we've been able to determine thus far, there is a real disconnect between community needs, community fear and the work of the prosecutor and the magistrate," said McCauley. "They viciously beat this man to within an inch of his life and then left him for dead - on tape, but beyond the police, no one in law enforcement seems to get it," concluded McCauley.
NCAVP addresses the pervasive problem of violence committed against and within the nation's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive communities. NCAVP is a coalition of programs that document and advocate for victims of anti-LGBT and anti-HIV/AIDS violence and harassment, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, police misconduct and other forms of victimization.
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