#pittsburgh lesbian correspondents

[seriousposting]

The Crime

Nex Benedict (they/them) was a 16-year-old nonbinary youth living in Oklahoma. They endured a reportedly vicious beating in a high school bathroom of Owasso High School, Nex died the next day in the hospital. They were a sophomore. This was February 7 and 8th. Last week, Nex was in high school. This week, they were buried.

According to KJRH

Three older girls were beating on the victim and her daughter in the girl’s bathroom. “I know at one point, one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating their head across the floor,” she said. That’s when she said a teacher walked in and broke it up. “Nex couldn’t walk to the nurses’ station on their own, and staff didn’t call the ambulance, which amazes me,” she said.The woman told 2 News the victim’s grandmother, who they primarily lived with, brought them to the hospital after the fight. She said the victim was released that evening but was brought back the next day and died.

Local police are investigating, but have not issued a statement or identified the victim. There is also no confirmation may of the details – how many students were involved in the assault, how many victims, what was the sequence of events, what’s been Nex’s school experience. We don’t know that being nonbinary is what triggered the assault.

We do know that nonbinary identity is often a factor or predictor of vulnerability to bullying and abuse.

Honoring Nex

Nex was born on January 11, 2008, in El Paso, Texas. They grew up in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex was a sophomore at Owasso High School. According to family, Nex identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns.

According to the obituary, Nex was a nature lover. They enjoyed caring for cats but particularly loved their cat, Zeus. Nex also enjoyed watching the Walking Dead, drawing, reading, and playing Ark and Minecraft. During the funeral, their family said they loved to cook and would often make up their own recipes. Nex was also a straight-A student.

I have not yet found any online presence for Nex.

Funeral Service were at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2024, at the Mowery Funeral Service Chapel in Owasso. You can read Nex obituary, but note that it refers to Nex using she/her pronouns

The Context

We also do not yet know the school’s policies, BUT it is fair to assume that they have a policy of some type that requires them to file incident reports around student violence. Furthermore, the decision to send a school based police officer to take the report at the hospital reinforces that conclusion. I expect any student experiencing that level of violence would stay with medical personnel until a family member picked them up or they were transported to the hospital. Those are basic liability issues, not unique to trans and queer students by any means.

Tell me again how in-school resource officers are effective if they don’t respond to this level of vicious violence until they get a call after school hours? Not these particular officers, per se, but the whole concept. Who was protecting Nex?

These are not extreme policies. They are pretty common. But we can definitely expect that school personnel had an obligation to address the situation before Nex went home.

Nex’s sister-in-law created a GoFundMe to raise $15,000 for the funeral scheduled for February 15.

Also unclear is why this teacher who allegedly broke it up didn’t ensure appropriate medical care on-site OR notify the police. Or the school nurse. Maybe they did? The ways that this situation deteriorated once the school was aware are endless.

Owasso Public Schools released the following statement regarding the student’s death:

“The Owasso Police Department has notified district leaders of the death of an Owasso High School student. The student’s name and cause of death have not yet been made public. As this is an active police investigation, we will have no additional comment at this time. Further inquiries should be directed to the Owasso Police Department.” “The district will have additional counselors at the school to provide support to students and staff beginning on Friday.” Owasso Public Schools

How is that not national news? A 16 year old beaten to death in a public school bathroom? By other students. All these unanswered seemingly obvious questions about what transpired, and how the adults involved acted. That should be every headline.

In fact, almost every local outlet covering the story misgender and deadnames Nex, using their same assigned at birth. The indignities pile on.

We don’t yet know if Nex’s nonbinary identity is directly tied to this incident. But, my God, it sure matters to me that this would happen to any child. A nonbinary kid assaulted in a girl’s bathroom. That outcome from the narrative of anti-trans rhetoric these past years.

Still why wasn’t this story breaking news? It involves a nonbinary student in a public school. And school violence and school police resource officers. It involves the deep fear so many trans youth have shared with me about their schools.

But false reports that the now dead shooter who invaded Joel Olsteen’s megachurch was transgender have consumed the headlines. That shooter was killed by police. Her 5 year old son was injured in the shooting. No other fatalities reported. Her identity as a cisgender woman has been clarified repeatedly, but that hasn’t stopped the false narrative.

That woman went into a church with an assault weapon and her young child. That’s horrible and newsworthy on its own. Still, the headlines fixate on the allegation she was a trans person. She was not a trans person, but the headlines stay fixated. The juxtaposition is jarring, but not new.

The shooting took place on February 11. Nex died on February 8.

Where are the these people when it comes to demanding truth about Nex’s death? Where is the outrage that any child has this experience? Who the hell is protecting other kids in that school from this outcome?

Does the media really prefer to spread misinformation about the trans community and turn a blind eye to trans victims of violence? Of course they do.

Rest in power, Nex. You endured a lot in your short life. We repeatedly did not show up for you. But you deserved better – a long, healthy, and happy life. The opportunity to simply grow up. An education setting where you didn’t fear for your life. And you deserve to be acknowledged and validated for your true identity, in your own words. I can’t imagine your terror during this assault and afterwards as your life drained away. I hope you find peace and justice now.

May your memory be a revolution.

Update – this post has been undated to correct a misspelling of Nex’s name and a reference to their name assigned at birth. One was simply a typo, but the other was inaccurate and I very much regret the harm that caused.

[jimvasta]

Another murdered child.

A 14 year old girl.

Pauly Likens.

A trans girl who will never have the chance to grow up.

This is horrific.

https://www.pghlesbian.com/2024/07/pauly-likens-was-a-14-year-old-trans-girl-when-she-was-brutally-murdered-in-sharon-pa/

[this-is-exorsexism]

a 16 year old nonbinary high-school student, Nex Benedict, was beaten to death in oklahoma by fellow students, and staff did not call an ambulance.

this is exorsexism. rest in pride. 🖤

[bigsisterrobyn]

I don't usually make these kind of posts so I really hope someone more articulate can format it properly but why haven't i seen anything about Nex Benedict???

Nex was a nonbinary 16 year old beaten severely in their high school bathroom in Owasso, Oklahoma, and passed away the next day. The attack took place February 7th, and while investigations haven't confirmed it was a hate attack, its not unreasonable to consider.

Below is a good article and their obituary, but be careful, the obituary and most local news coverages use Nex's dead name / wrong pronouns.

[bernard-is-tired]

Please go read about Jacob Williamson. if you are an ally to trans people, hear his story. Understand that he is the reality for all trans people.

[auti-starshine]

PAULY LIKENS WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD AND SHE WAS MURDERED.

I HAVENT SEEN NEARLY ENOUGH PEOPLE TALK ABOUT HER SHE WAS A FOURTEEN YEAR OLD TRANS GIRL AND SHE IS DEAD

Her body was DISMEMBERED and tossed into a river. She was murdered and disrespected and then misgendered by the news.

[milobobiloo]

Pauly Likens, a 14 year old trans girl, was murdered on June 23rd. Her body was found dismembered in a fucking river. She was FOURTEEN.

I will link an article about her and her death as well as her family’s Gofundme that’s raising money for her funeral.

Post about her. Talk about her. Say her name. Do NOT forget about her. Pauly deserved a long and happy life, may she rest in peace.

[shoujoboy-restart]

16-year-old non-binary student Nex Benedict was beaten to death at Owasso High School in Oklahoma.

Self-described stochastic terrorist and January 6th Capitol rioter Chaya Raichik, owner of the social media account Libs of TikTok, has become infamous for her viral harassment and moral panic campaigns targeting minorities— with an emphasis on vilifying LGBTQ+ existence. Since 2021, Raichik’s posts targeting advocates for and members of the LGBTQ+ community have been followed with a deluge of violent death threats (including lynching threats against the Los Angeles Unified School District). Nowhere has Raichik’s influence been more visible than Oklahoma, where her anti-LGBTQ+ exploits earned her an official position on the Oklahoma Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee by controversial far-right Superintendent Ryan Walters. Under Walters’ leadership, Oklahoma has been aggressively working to ban books and education on LGBTQ+ issues in schools across the state, with Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond stating that proposed rules to ban LGBTQ+ books and content were “unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.” It’s been confirmed that Raichik’s posts have fueled multiple bomb threats against schools specifically in Oklahoma. Officials from Oklahoma told NBC News that they believe Chaya Raichik’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture warring “sparked threats in their localities with her posts on social media that digitally heckle people such as drag performers, LGBTQ teachers and doctors who treat transgender patients.”   One of these instances was at the Owasso School District (just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma). In 2022, Chaya Raichik targeted an Owasso teacher for speaking out in support of LGBTQ+ students who lacked acceptance from their parents. Raichik’s post was shared thousands of times on social media and resulted in the teacher getting condemned and harassed until they resigned. The posts Raichik made about the teacher were later deleted, but have been archived. It’s unclear what prompted the deletion of the posts by Raichik. We know Raichik’s Libs of TikTok posts have contributed to a culture of intolerance against LGBTQ+ youth in schools, and now this hate may be manifesting beyond mere threats. This month, a non-binary 16-year-old student at Owasso High School was brutally murdered in the girl’s restroom. According to local news outlets and family, Nex Benedict was beaten by three older female students. The mother of Benedict’s best friend told KJRH News that "one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating [Benedict’s] head across the floor.” Reports say Benedict was unable to take themselves to the nurse’s office after a teacher finally intervened in the brutal assault. For reasons that remain unclear, Owasso High School refused to call an ambulance for 16-year-old Nex Benedict, who died from their injuries in the hospital the next day. A motive for this killing has not been shared by law enforcement, but we know that schools in Oklahoma have been specifically pushing violent eliminationist rhetoric against transgender and non-binary youth— a fact exemplified by the state’s hiring of Chaya Raichik following her incitements of terror against the state’s schools over LGBTQ+ rights.  “This is the inevitable result of the anti trans moral panic,” said civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who shared an article about Benedict’s death published by the Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents Blog. “This is horrifying, and comes as lawmakers are increasingly spreading fear over trans people in bathrooms,” wrote LGBTQ+ journalist and advocate Erin Reed regarding this murder.

[planetofsnarfs]

Sue Benedict, in an interview for the news site Popular Information, has called the Owasso Police Department’s Feb. 21 statement regarding the death of her child, Nex Benedict, “a big cover” released simply as “something to calm the people.”

And just-released video footage from school surveillance cameras and from a police body cam combined with 9-1-1 calls appear to point to what the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation calls a “cascade of failures [by] school, local government and law enforcement” officials.

Non-binary 16-year-old Nex Benedict died Feb. 8, a day after being beaten by three other students in a bathroom at Owasso High School. But it wasn’t until Feb. 20 when the website Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents reported on the incident that Nex’s death begin gaining wide attention.

Initial reports indicated that a teacher came into the bathroom and broke up the fight, and that Nex, at the time, was unable to walk to the nurse’s office on their own. Reports said that school officials failed to call an ambulance and did not report the assault to police.

Nex’s family took them to the emergency room where they were treated and released the same night. The following day Nex was rushed back to the hospital where they were pronounced dead.

School officials have disputed those early reports, and on Wednesday, Feb. 21, Owasso Police posted a statement to their Facebook page that, Popular Information reports, “appeared to defend Owasso High School’s response to the Feb. 7 incident. The state also suggested that Nex’s death the following day was unrelated to the bathroom assault.”

The statement said that, according to the medical examiner, autopsy reports “did not indicate that the student died as a result of trauma.” The medical examiner’s report did not, in fact, actually say that and the autopsy is not yet complete.

Owasso Police Lt. Nick Boatman told Public Information that it is not normal practice for police to release autopsy results before an autopsy is complete, but they had done so in this case “to head off some of this national scrutiny.” Boatman also acknowledged that the medical examiner “did not explicitly tell him that Nex ‘did not die from something as a result of that fight.’ But that’s how Boatman interpreted the medical examiner’s comments,” Popular Information noted.

Popular Information got a copy of an “affidavit for search warrant” by police on Feb. 9 that indicated police suspected “foul play” and were investigating Nex’s death as a murder. Boatman told Popular Information that murder charges are “still on the table” at this time.

WHAT THE VIDEO SHOWS

According to a press release issued today (Saturday, Feb. 24) by GLAAD via email, newly-released school surveillance video and police body cam video contradict at least some of the statements by school and police officials and show possible police misconduct.

As per the GLAAD email:

Newly released police body cam footage from inside the emergency room raises concerns about questionable police involvement:

• The police officer discouraged Sue Benedict from asking him to file a police report and saying it would open up Nex to legal liability and that it would be a shame for any of the students to have to deal with a criminal situation for quote “something so minuscule.” • The police officer told Nex that they were “just as guilty as” their attackers. This followed Nex explaining that after repeated harassment and bullying from three students, they threw water on the students. Those three students then began to violently beat Nex, slamming their head on the floor until they lost consciousness. • The police officer described the verbal bullying of Nex by classmates as “free speech.” • The police officer suggested multiple excuses for why the school did not follow protocol and alert law enforcement about the assault.

Newly released school surveillance footage show Owasso High School officials did not follow protocol:

• The police officer confirmed that protocol dictates that Nex’s high school should have notified police about the assault and that the school “dropped the ball.” • The police officer then suggested multiple excuses for why the school broke protocol.

New 911 audio shows Nex’s mother had to report the assault after the school did not, and details Nex’s final moments:

• Nex’s mother Sue Benedict called 9-1-1 twice. First on the day of the attack, from the emergency room, with Nex by her side in a hospital bed, to report an assault had taken place at school. • Sue Benedict made the second 9-1-1 call the following day when Nex collapsed at home. Sue reported Nex’s “eyes rolled back into their head,” their “hands curled” and Nex was “struggling to breathe.”

Newly released videos detail horrors of attack and reveal ongoing history of bullying and targeted harassment experienced by Nex:

• Nex’s mother Sue Benedict explains Nex was pinned to the ground and beaten until they blacked out. • School footage shows Nex unsteady on their feet after the brutal 3-on-1 beating. Note that the school did not call an ambulance or the police. • Nex and their mother discuss the ongoing bullying and harassment Nex faced at school, naming specifically that Nex was targeted for the way they dressed. • Nex explains that they were unable to see the point in bringing recent bullying to the school’s attention given how much they had been bullied and harassed at school in the past year.

GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in today’s email, “It is haunting to hear Nex Benedict, in their own words, describe how school and state leaders failed, at every level of leadership, to keep them safe from bullying and harm. Less than 24 hours later, Nex would collapse and die.

“The release of the chilling 9-1-1 call by Nex’s mother, Sue Benedict, school surveillance video, and police body-cam footage of Nex in the emergency room recounting the brutal assault, all point to a clear and catastrophic cascade of failures from a school and state’s basic responsibility of safety and care for all young people.”

Ellis added, “Passing laws that ban students from bathrooms, refusing to act to prevent or stop bullying in all its forms, coupled with state leaders who perjure themselves by spreading lies and ostracizing LGBTQ students — this is a hostile, combustible environment that no student should ever have to endure in school.

Every young person, their friends and their families, need to know this is not normal and this cannot be acceptable. In Oklahoma and other states passing discriminatory laws against LGBTQ youth, we must all decide that now is the time to speak up and stand up to demand safety and acceptance for all students to live, learn and grow in peace.”

[fiapple]

“This article contains descriptions of fatal violence against a nonbinary person.

River Nevaeh Goddard, a nonbinary 17-year-old, was found dead in their boyfriend’s house earlier this month. Goddard’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Shane Curry, was charged in connection with their death after telling police that he had stabbed them with a sword. According to Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, Goddard was nonbinary and used she and they pronouns.

On April 3, 2024, police were called to Curry’s home in Stow, Massachusetts for a well-being check, per a press release from Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office obtained by local outlet MassLive. Although Curry stopped officers from coming inside the home for nearly two hours, when police finally entered, they found Goddard dead inside and arrested Curry, taking him to a local hospital for evaluation. Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents reports that the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children had listed them as a missing child since April 2022, when Goddard was 15.”

Note: As a result of the antiblack racism that often gets perpetuated in these circumstances by my fellow white lgbt+ people, I am going to explicitly ask that you do not use “rest in power” in the notes of this post. The phrase is Black-exclusive for very clear reasons, and this should not have to be continually explained. Nor should it be the sole responsibility of Black lgbt+ people to point this out while also mourning the deaths in our community themselves. Do not turn this into an opportunity to further hurt people.

[tieflingkisser]

Libs of TikTok targeted a district, then a non-binary student was killed on campus

Officials from Oklahoma told NBC News that they believe Chaya Raichik’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture warring “sparked threats in their localities with her posts on social media that digitally heckle people such as drag performers, LGBTQ teachers and doctors who treat transgender patients.”   One of these instances was at the Owasso School District (just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma). In 2022, Chaya Raichik targeted an Owasso teacher for speaking out in support of LGBTQ+ students who lacked acceptance from their parents. Raichik’s post was shared thousands of times on social media and resulted in the teacher getting condemned and harassed until they resigned. The posts Raichik made about the teacher were later deleted, but have been archived. It’s unclear what prompted the deletion of the posts by Raichik. We know Raichik’s Libs of TikTok posts have contributed to a culture of intolerance against LGBTQ+ youth in schools, and now this hate may be manifesting beyond mere threats. This month, a non-binary 16-year-old student at Owasso High School was brutally murdered in the girl’s restroom. According to local news outlets and family, Nex Benedict was beaten by three older female students. The mother of Benedict’s best friend told KJRH News that "one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating [Benedict’s] head across the floor.” Reports say Benedict was unable to take themselves to the nurse’s office after a teacher finally intervened in the brutal assault. For reasons that remain unclear, Owasso High School refused to call an ambulance for 16-year-old Nex Benedict, who died from their injuries in the hospital the next day. A motive for this killing has not been shared by law enforcement, but we know that schools in Oklahoma have been specifically pushing violent eliminationist rhetoric against transgender and non-binary youth— a fact exemplified by the state’s hiring of Chaya Raichik following her incitements of terror against the state’s schools over LGBTQ+ rights.  “This is the inevitable result of the anti trans moral panic,” said civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who shared an article about Benedict’s death published by the Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents Blog. “This is horrifying, and comes as lawmakers are increasingly spreading fear over trans people in bathrooms,” wrote LGBTQ+ journalist and advocate Erin Reed regarding this murder.

[rebeleden]

Update on the Lives and Deaths of Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson - Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents

[panic-sl0th]

This has me really, really messed up today.

This is where all the anti-trans, hate towards LGBTQ+ folks in this state has gotten us. A child was viciously beaten to death in their OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOL BATHROOM

I'm sick to my stomach and so fucking sad. They deserved better than this. The local news places are barely reporting on it and when they do, they misgender them the entire article. There's ZERO mention of the people who killed them getting in any kind of trouble, either.

[subtletysubversive]

Nex, you deserved better.

[auti-starshine]

Another young trans person was killed. Her name was Pauly and she was only 14 years old.

Rest in peace Polly. You deserved to grow up. You deserved a long and happy life. We will not forget you.

Her family has set up a Gofundme if you can done please do: