Sorry to ruin your Monday, but I'm about to. If you haven't heard anything infuriating so far today, get ready because this is gonna sting.
You might recall that the first big news story of 2017 involved a mentally handicapped young man from Chicago being kidnapped and tortured on Facebook live by four thugs. Two men, two women; all of them Godless heathens who glorified violence for cheap laughs and social media clicks.
The victim's name is Austin. He's a nice kid who wasn't born with the same gifts and talents that you and I probably share. They kidnapped him because he's white. As they tortured him they streamed the incident over social media. During the narration of their live torture marathon they proclaimed they were hurting Austin as revenge for white-America electing President Trump. Ironically, Austin wasn't even a Trump supporter. In fact, he didn't support any political candidate. He's just a nice kid who has a hard time functioning in normal society because he suffers from a laundry list of mental health issues.
At the end of last week the first of four suspects in this case was given her punishment. After spending a little less than a year in jail waiting for her trial, 19-yr-old Brittany Covington of Chicago is set to be released. Her punishment is four years of probation and a four year ban from Facebook. It's hard to imagine someone getting probation for the crime of human torture, but that's what happened on Friday in President Obama’s former home town.
Austin was missing for four days. This whole nightmare first began last New Year's Day when he disappeared. Eventually he ended up at a Westside Chicago apartment with Brittany and her sister Tanishia who used Facebook-live to stream footage of their friends Tesfaye Cooper and Jordan Hill kicking the white mentally handicapped man while they put out cigarettes on his face and made him drink from a toilet. They tied him up and screamed at him while inflicting physical pain on his body. They laughed and giggled as he cried in pain and begged for mercy. Millions of Internet users have seen this video since the incident first took place. It’s no secret about what they did. The terror left an already severely disabled young man in even worse condition. Even after he healed from the physical cuts, bruises and burns they endured on his body, the damage to his mental and emotional state is almost incomprehensible. He went weeks without speaking after the incident. He ate very little food and still hasn't fully recovered from the trauma he endured [and he probably never will]. And why? These four thugs claimed they were performing these evil acts because they hated white people who elected Donald Trump. That was their justification.
Now, after months of waiting, Brittany was finally charged with a hate crime but received a rather lenient punishment for her deeds. Is four years of probation and a four year ban from Facebook a worthy punishment for human torture? Getting suspended from Facebook seems like a punishment that's typically issued to people who post inappropriate memes, not for those who assist in sadism.
Let's compare this case to another recent hate crime incident that captured national headlines. Michael Wolfe is a 37-year-old man from Titusville, Florida who was also recently convicted of a hate crime. In January 2016 Michael was charged with breaking into a mosque and leaving a slab of raw bacon inside. This gesture was meant as an insult to Muslims, a religious group that prohibits the consumption of pork. Obviously breaking and entering is wrong. What he did was illegal, there's no doubt about that, and for his crime he was charged with 15 years in prison and 15 years probation.
Michael Wolfe didn't physically hurt anyone, but he'll still spend 15-years in jail. Brittany Covington, on the other hand, participated in acts of physical torture against a mentally handicapped person. Yet she will walk free. Both of these crimes were done in the name of bigotry and prejudice. Both acts were clearly illegal. However, one of these crimes involved physical injury against a human being while the other did not. It's strange to think that the criminal who actually hurt someone won't be going to jail. Is this justice?
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