Local
AU student expelled over arrest in attack on gay Asian man, parents
Patrick Trebat no longer affiliated with university
An American University graduate student who was arrested by D.C. police on Aug. 7 on charges that he assaulted a gay Asian man and the man’s parents while shouting homophobic and anti-Asian slurs “is no longer affiliated with the university and will not be allowed on campus,” according to a report by WTOP News.
In an Oct. 9 broadcast that it updated this week, WTOP said Patrick Trebat, 38, who had been taking a night class at the university’s Kogod School of Business, was banned from returning to the campus.
Charging documents filed in D.C. Superior Court show that Trebat was charged by D.C. police with one count of felony assault, two counts of simple assault and one count of destruction of property for allegedly assaulting and injuring Sean Lai, 30, an out gay man of Chinese ancestry, and his parents on the 3700 block of Fulton Street, N.W., on Aug. 7.
The charging documents say Trebat allegedly began to follow Lai and his parents as they were walking along the street in the city’s Observatory Circle neighborhood near the National Cathedral. According to a statement by a police official from the police district whose officers made the arrest, Trebat punched and kicked the three victims as he stated, “Get out of my country.” The police statement says the family was taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.
A separate police report says Trebat shouted the word “faggots” at the family and shouted, “You are not Americans!”
Based on these allegations, prosecutors classified the assault charges as an anti-Asian bias related crime, but they did not add an anti-gay classification to the charges.
Court records show that Trebat was released two days after his arrest while awaiting trial under the court’s High Intensity Supervision Program, which, among other things, imposed a curfew requiring him to return home by 10 p.m.
An Oct. 8 story in The Eagle, the American University student newspaper, says it learned that Trebat’s attorney filed a motion in court, which the Washington Blade also discovered from court records, asking a judge to extend the curfew deadline from 10 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. so that Trebat could attend at night class at American University.
The motion, which prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not oppose and the judge approved, identified Trebat in the public court records as an AU graduate student.
According to the Eagle, representatives of the university’s Asian American and LGBTQ student groups criticized university officials for not alerting students that an AU student charged with an anti-Asian hate crime while hurling homophobic slurs had access to the campus and could pose a danger to students.
“Patrick Trebant is not affiliated with American University and is not allowed on campus,” AU told the Blade on Wednesday in a statement. “While we cannot discuss details of an individual matter, when a student has been arrested, charged, convicted of, or sentenced for a felony crime, the university’s student conduct code provides for an administrative adjudication process. The safety of our students and our community is our priority.”
The Eagle reports that the code of conduct states that the dean of students or their designee can administratively adjudicate a case when a student has been accused of a non-academic offense “where the student has been arrested, charged, convicted of, or sentenced for a felony crime” for certain misconduct. The code of conduct applies in a situation in which a student is arrested for an off-campus allegation.
Court records show Trebat is scheduled to return to court at 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 15 for a felony status hearing before Superior Court Judge Judith Pipe.
Neither Trebat nor his attorney, Brandi Harden, could immediately be reached for comment.
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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