479
Illinois prosecutors weigh hate crime charges after lesbian attacked at McDonald's
(www.cbsnews.com)
What else could they possibly classify it as?
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
479 points (98.8% liked)
News
29595 readers
3396 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Patriotic duty? Half this country is so horribly hateful.
Closer to a third, another third is sane, and then there are the idiots that didn't vote they deserve their fair share of criticism as well.
5 of the idiots that didn’t vote seen your comment and must have had their feelings hurt.
Good.
At least the people in Gaza are safe now.
So safe. So glad staying at home worked.
I like you
Every day I'm made ever more grateful that I'm not 'Murican
It's not a description, it's a legal term. If they claim it is a hate-crime they have to be able to prove they had a specific motivation which can be difficult.
They beat a person near to death for looking too man-ish and being in the women's bathroom. I don't think hate crime will be a hard thing to prove here.
Yeah just like it wouldnt be hard to prove cops killing innocents when there is literal video evidence, yet we know how thats working out.
ThEy wErE cOmInG rIgHt 4 us!!
Remember, some of the jury will probably be at least loosely against lesbians or trans people. If all you have is she said, he said, those people won't convict for a hate crime. But if you stick to just the beating, which doesn't need to prive a motive, they would vote to convict. It sucks, but that is what a jury of your peers means.
Oh, I know
I said as much further down
The legal burden of proof is fraught
My initial reaction was born of frustration and disgust at what had happened
why else would a group of boys beat a woman almost to death? i’m sure there’s witnesses and security video showing it started over the bathroom.
in this great nation, they’re happy to charge you with multiple excessive charges and then drop some during the plea bargain.
in this case: Assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than death, and hate crime modification… two felonies…. being able to perfectly prove it comes later….
why else would a group of boys beat a woman almost to death?
You make an excellent point - it's never happened before for any other reason.
oh hehe, so fucking clever.
go ahead and pretend like you don’t know what i mean… i won’t be arguing with a disingenuous person like yourself.
(if you’re actually that stupid, it’s about likelihood, not “it’s never happened ever so never ever could times infinity”.
two boys attacked one woman, in a mcdonald’s, with no provocation, interaction, or plausible reason other than she used the bathroom and wasn’t feminine enough so they thought she was trans. Words were exchanged that betrayed their motives.
the “why else” has, throughout history, been for robbery or sexual assault… or occasionally a single person with mental illness, not a pair of men them…. i’m not advocating for a conviction, i’m advocating for criminal charges, the nitty gritty can be sussed out in court)
Not sure what youre being so defensive about. You made a wrong assumption which in no way would hold up in court, thats what they pointed out. Youre making it sound like winning a case is the same as solving a math equation, but its not. In many cases it is very complicated and legal moves need to have a solid basis.
Your reaction is very childish and its only purpose was to mask your unknowingness.
Im not even sure you understood the point they were trying to make. Guys beating up women happens a lot (at least a lot more often than it should) and most of the time for reasons other than homophobia.
🤛 🤜 🤛 🤜 🤛 🤜 💦
Fucking seriously!!! What is there to weight?!
Sadly, the odds of getting a conviction
They can easily get assault, but a hate crime requires proving intent and having a jury sympathetic to the victim
It's a shitty situation
A group of strangers started harassing her and using anti-gay slurs as she left the restroom
Sounds open-and-shut hate crime to me.
Now convince a jury of stupid, ignorant yanks of that.
Edit: I live in Australia
To us, you're all "Seppos"
Septic-Tank>Yank
Yanks are from the northeast, which is generally fiscally conservative and socially progressive.
There are no Yanks in Illinois. That's the Midwest. We're in the Northeast (though ignorance is not regional).
I live in Australia,
I was unaware of your regional differences with that word!
We use it to describe all of you
Canada too.
Y’all down there in Red White and Stupid land can complain all you want about “yanks” meaning all the US considering you’ve co-opted “American” to mean the same thing.
They don’t understand that we mean it like “Yanqui”, as in, imperialists.
Yeah, why is there even a question about this?
Can’t they charge and try for multiple counts?
I dunno, maybe
Hopefully.
At least Attempted Murder 2 and Assault & Battery 2... But I'll bet that those hateful fucks are good boys and things just got out of hand.
"The Kane County State's Attorney's office initially declined to issue hate crime charges, but on Wednesday said they are working with police to determine if hate crime charges are appropriate." What else could this be?
She told the strangers she is a lesbian and flicked her wrist at them.
What does "flick her wrist at them" mean?
I would guess this means the universal “get away from me” or “shoo” gesture.
Possibly like this
Ah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking.
i was thinking limpwrist.
Say "I'm a lesbian!" while putting up both hands in exasperation, then again only using one hand. Flick the wrist like a conductor to emphasize the idiocy of the situation.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Kane county is a cross-vector for urban blight machismo and good ol’ Bible thumping bigotry
Not sure why they need to add that she's lesbian. She's a woman and that was enough for them to attack her.
A group of strangers started harassing her and using anti-gay slurs as she left the restroom.
When she walked away, she said they followed. She told the strangers she is a lesbian and flicked her wrist at them.
"How it started was because I'm a lesbian — just because I walked into the woman's bathroom, and I looked the way I look," Grass said.
Sounds like the reason it's mentioned is because it's why they attacked. It was a homophobic attack.
Thanks for the correction, I understood that she was attacked because they tough she was a trans woman.
