Local
Teen sentenced to 5 years in McDonald’s beating
Trans victim treated for post-traumatic stress disorder
A 19-year-old woman charged with the April 18 beating of a transgender woman inside a McDonald’s restaurant in a Baltimore suburb was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison.
The incident attracted international attention after a McDonald’s employee captured the attack on video and posted it online, where it went viral.
The video shows Teonna Monae Brown and a 14-year-old female, whom authorities have not identified, repeatedly punching and kicking Chrissy Lee Polis, 22, in the head and body while dragging her by her hair across the floor of the restaurant.
Mark Scurti, Polis’s attorney, said Polis planned to attend the sentencing hearing on Tuesday but was unable to do so after experiencing recurring symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, for which she was diagnosed following the beating.
Scurti said Polis checked herself into a crisis counseling facility last Friday, which has provided assistance to Polis since the incident occurred in April.
“I continue to suffer seizures, bouts of crying, mental anguish and anxiety,” Polis said in a victim impact statement submitted to the judge prior to Tuesday’s sentencing. “I fear being alone. I have flashbacks about the attacks. I have twice now been admitted to a crisis center, and I am having extreme mental difficulty.”
The LGBT communities in Baltimore and D.C., led by transgender advocacy groups, rallied in support of Polis on several occasions, including a protest demonstration outside the McDonald’s where the attack took place.
Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge John Turnbull III sentenced Brown to 10 years in prison for each of two separate charges of first-degree assault and commission of a hate crime. He suspended five years on both counts and allowed Brown to serve the two five-year terms concurrently, which means she is required to serve a maximum of five years. Turnbull also issued a three-year period of probation upon her release from jail.
The sentencing came just over one month after Brown agreed to a government offer to plead guilty to the two charges in exchange for prosecutors limiting their request for jail time to five years.
The 14-year-old female has admitted responsibility to the same charges of first-degree assault and a hate crime, authorities said. She was sentenced earlier this year to a juvenile facility for an undisclosed period of time, prosecutors said.
“We’re very happy with the sentence today,” Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger, the lead prosecutor in the case, told the Blade after Tuesday’s sentencing. “We had an 18-year-old defendant [now 19] with no prior criminal convictions who’s going to jail for five years,” he said. “We think that reflects the severity of the beating and we think it sends a very good signal that you can’t commit these kinds of crimes in Baltimore County.”
Transgender activists said the incident galvanized the LGBT community and many straight supporters into taking action against anti-transgender bias. Members of the Maryland Legislature have pledged to push next year for passage of a transgender non-discrimination bill that died in the legislature earlier this year.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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