Violence Against LGBT People Continues to Rise in Washington, D.C.

While Washington, D.C., is hailed as having some of the best antidiscrimination policies in place for trans people, it also has one of the highest rates of antitransgender crime. In fact, the number of incidents of violence against LGBT people in D.C. has many concerned. In the past 10 days alone, six separate attacks against LGBT people, four of them involving trans victims, have been reported, according to the Daily Kos group TransAction.

Two trans women were attacked in two separate incidents Sunday. One was sexually assaulted at 3:30 a.m. after accepting a ride from an unidentified man, while another was shot roughly 30 minutes later, with robbery being the apparent motive.

Before that, last Thursday a 22-year-old transgender woman was approached by two men who reportedly asked her for a light before one of the men attacked her and pulled off her wig. When she turned to flee she was shot in the buttocks, and her purse was stolen by one of the men.

On Sunday, June 23, two women attacked a drag performer, identified as a gay man, outside a pizzeria. The attackers bit the victim in the thigh and yanked him around by the hair -- which caused a scalp wound -- while a bystander shot video of the crime and encouraged the fight.

The day before that, a 35-year-old lesbian was shot and killed in D.C. in an apparent armed robbery.

On June 21, Bree Wallace, a trans woman, met a man to get a cigarette and was stabbed 11 times after refusing to perform oral sex on her attacker. Wallace is still hospitalized, recovering from a severed tendon in her left hand and collapsed lung.

None of these attacks have been classified as hate crimes.