Hate crimes commited by children. - Democratic Underground

graywarrior

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Fri Sep-11-09 11:23 AM
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Hate crimes commited by children.

Brutal beating of immigrant, charges against six boys bring alarms in Lynn

The victims mother

LYNN - Damian Merida was the seventh of 11 children born in a thatched-roof house with a dirt floor in Guatemala. He was just a boy when he left, following his brothers to the United States because their village had little food, no medicine, no work, and no future.

All of that he found here, in an immigrant enclave of Lynn. Everyone in his family knew how far they had come.

Then, in the middle of a warm summer day on July 22, the family’s vision of America was lost in a blur of bricks, rocks, bottles, and sticks.

As Merida slept under a shade tree in a Lynn park, a mob of children allegedly descended on the 30-year-old landscaper and savagely beat him. The vicious attack is provoking questions and inciting fear throughout this city and beyond, because police say he was targeted because of his ethnicity.

His alleged attackers are six boys age 11 to 14; most were on championship sports teams, and one is an immigrant himself, from West Africa, the Globe has confirmed.

Police are investigating whether the same group was responsible for an attack in the area two weeks before on another man from Guatemala, and are urging the victim to come forward.

Once stocky and strong, Merida is now in Tewksbury Hospital, learning to walk and feed himself. Family members say he has permanent brain damage and will never live and work on his own. Sometimes he suffers from long crying fits. His family is suddenly tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

“Look how they left him,’’ his 66-year-old mother, Teofila Merida, said in Spanish, covering her deeply lined face with hands wrinkled from decades of picking coffee and husks of corn. She stared at a photograph of her son in the hospital, his eyes swollen shut, his face covered in tubes, his legs wrapped in bandages. “I can’t understand why they would have done it.’’

The boys are facing multiple assault charges, including armed assault with intent to murder, and a civil rights violation because they allegedly targeted him as an immigrant. Authorities would not confirm the boys’ names because they are minors, and juvenile court proceedings are private.

Merida family members and the Daily Item of Lynn said the boys pleaded not guilty and all but one is free pending trial. Lynn public schools suspended four of the boys indefinitely, which they will appeal today, said Rick Iarrobino, a school official. The oldest boy, age 14, is still in state custody.

The sixth boy’s status is unclear. He attended St. Mary’s Junior-Senior High School last year but he did not re-enroll in the fall, the principal said.

Despite their anonymity, the boys are under heavy scrutiny as the city searches for answers. The Anti-Defamation League and the Latino Professional Network condemned the attack this week. Doubts about the attackers’ motive have also surfaced: Frances Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit La Vida Inc., said she did not believe Merida was targeted because of his ethnicity, as crime is widespread in Lynn.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/11/attack_on_immigrant_raises_concerns_in_lynn/