Theresa Dixon still can’t believe the case ended as it did.
“It’s unbelievable that this kind of race crime could happen in 1990,” says Dixon. “They invaded my house, damaged my property, and scared the hell out of my family, including my mother. What’s worse is that they got off so lightly. I wasn’t asking for the death penalty; I just wanted the system to show its disapproval by enforcing a harsh penalty.”
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“Sometimes these cases don’t get the attention they deserve from police, prosecutors, or the news media,” says Elizabeth Shuman-Moore, a staff attorney for the committee. “I know it’s a cliche, but we want to use the civil cases to send a message and show that violent hate crime will not be tolerated or lightly dismissed.”
According to state law, “a person commits hate crime when, by reason of the race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, he commits assault, battery, aggravated assault, misdemeanor theft, criminal trespass to residence, misdemeanor criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to vehicle, criminal trespass to real property or mob action.”
In the northwest suburbs, a synagogue and Jewish community centers have been defaced, and Hispanics and blacks have been attacked, Burris Gasior reported. At one point in the summer of 1989, three men dressed in camouflage hunting clothes began firing high-powered BB rifles at sunbathers in a section of a suburban forest preserve where gays allegedly gather.
“The girl was crying and my son asked her what was wrong,” says Dixon. “She said, ‘Nothing.’ My son asked her if she needed help. She said, ‘No.’ So my son went on his way.”
Dixon vehemently disagrees. “How could they say this isn’t racial when they were yelling things like ‘nigger die’? It’s just inconceivable to me that Quinn could say these things.”
