But this incident does bring up an interesting issue concerning hate-crime.
Gay teacher’s sex video stolen, posted to school siteA gay teacher at a high school in a suburb of Little Rock, Ark., was fired from his job in October after an unidentified computer hacker gained access to a video of him and an adult male partner having sex and posted the video file on his school’s website, where it was viewed by students.
Brian Cody Bray, 29, said he was “mortified” when a co-worker at the school informed him by phone on Sept. 29 while he was home on sick leave that the video had been posted on his faculty page on the website of Maumelle Charter High School in Maumelle, Ark.
“Pretty much immediately after that phone call I went to the bathroom and threw up,” Bray told the Washington Blade. “I was just in shock that oh my God, this is something that will impact my career, impact my life and what am I going to do?”,,,Arkansas doesn’t have a state hate crimes law, preventing the case from being prosecuted as a hate crime if a suspect is eventually identified and arrested. Under Arkansas’s criminal code, the type of computer hacking committed by the suspect against Bray is considered a felony offense.Jason Marsden is executive director of the Denver-based Matthew Shepard Foundation, which advocates for adopting and strengthening state hate crime laws. He said nearly all state hate crime statutes, including D.C.’s, along with the federal Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, limit their coverage to violent hate crimes.He is not aware of any such law that would treat a so-called cybercrime like the one committed against Bray as a hate crime, Marsden said.“He’s had his life trashed by some bigot criminal,” Marsden said. “But we don’t have laws at the federal level or in the state of Arkansas that address those exact circumstances.”
No comments:
Post a Comment