As America and other places around the globe become more and more polarized and people continue to be influenced by fear-mongering pundits and hateful rhetoric on the Internet, it’s becoming more common for children, even little ones, to be victimized by hate crimes. Here are some of the more notable stories involving hate crimes against children:
A desire to drown Muslim preschoolers
In Euless, Texas, in July of 2024, a white woman was accused of a hate crime for trying to drown a Muslim preschooler in a community pool. According to police, the victim’s mother was watching her kids swim at their apartment complex’s pool when 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf confronted the mother, who was wearing a hijab, and asked where she was from. Wolf then allegedly jumped into the pool and tried to drown the woman’s 3-year-old daughter.
“She’s killing my baby!” screamed the mother, who was not named for safety reasons. A witness to the commotion called 911, and when the mother attempted to intervene to save her daughter, Wolf is said to have yanked off her hijab and kicked her.
The mother, who hails from Palestine, was shaken up by the incident, saying, “My country is facing a war, and we are facing that hate here.” Wolf was charged with attempted capital murder and released on a $40,000 bond. (The Week, 7-5-2024, p. 7)
Tormenting Aborigine kids
In Australia, a white tradesman doing work on a vacant property discovered 3 Aboriginal kids (ages 6, 7 and 8) swimming in an abandoned pool. So he pulled the kids out of the pool, bound their wrists with zip ties, and then called the police, making the kids sit sobbing on the driveway for an hour while waiting for the police to arrive. (Peppiatt & McNeill, 2024) While technically the kids may have been trespassing on the abandoned property, this was nonetheless a ridiculously abusive over-reaction, and part of a string of similar insults committed by white adults against Aboriginal youth in the area.
Boy murdered by his neighbor in hate crime
Six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayourne was murdered by the family’s landlord in a hate crime. Seventy-one-year-old Joseph Czuba had apparently grown angry and paranoid after listening to conservative radio reports about the war between Israel and Gaza. So he stormed into the family’s residence screaming, “You Muslims must die!” before stabbing the boy 26 times. The boy may have been stabbed as he ran to protect his mother, who was also seriously injured in the attack. (The Week, Oct. 27, 2023, p. 7) It’s a classic example of the power of ideas: Twisted beliefs can turn morality on its head, filling a presumably otherwise ‘normal’ person with so much animosity that they could stab a kindergartner with a knife…not just once, or twice, but more than two dozen times.
References:
Peppiatt, R., McNeill, H. (2024, March 22) “Racism and vigilantism a toxic mix,” The Week, p. 14