Majority Of Transgender Murders In 2011 Were Women Of Color [Report]

Anti-violence group releases annual report on LGBTQ hate crimes

An overwhelming majority of last year’s transgender murder victims were people of color, according to a new report by an anti-hate violence group.

Of the 30 hate-motivated murders of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-affected people in 2011, 87 percent of them were people of color. Approximately half of them them were transgender women, or males who present themselves as female.

(Pictured above left: Lateisha Green, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was killed in Syracuse, NY in 2008. Her murderer was sentenced to 25 years in 2009.)

That’s the highest number recorded since the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program began tracking the data.

“Murders of LGBTQ people have increased over the last three years, indicating a pattern of escalating violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected people,” said Jake Finney of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Community Center in Los Angeles.

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Finney’s organization, along with anti-violence groups in more than a dozen states, held a press conference Thursday to call attention to the alarmingly disproportionate number of murdered transgender women.

While violence against LGBT was down 16 percent last year, the murder rate rose 11 percent, according to the report.

NCAVP cautioned that the number could be much higher, given the disparity in how law enforcement agencies classify the crimes. For example, some transgendered victims are not properly identified in police reports. The nuances and severity of the incidences can be lost, the group says.

Many of the transgender women who become victims of violent crimes are often at risk from a very young age. According to the report, LGBT youth between the ages of 18- and 30-years-old were more than twice as likely to experience physical violence in 2011.