Chad Sanford, speaking to WPLG (left) and on the floor during the attack (right) — Images: WPLG
A transgender teenager has spoken out about the “living hell” she endures at her Florida middle school after she was attacked by other students.
Chad Sanford, a 13-year-old student at Deerfield Beach Middle School, told WPLG that she has been repeatedly attacked and bullied because of her LGBTQ identity.
Last month, video emerged showing Sanford being attacked while at school. In the video, filmed by a student, youths surround Sanford while a male student approaches from behind, picks Sanford up, and slams her into the ground.
The attack continues once Sanford is on the ground, with the students also yelling anti-gay slurs.
“He just stepped on my face, they were kicking and spitting on me and all that was a little clip of the video,” Sanford told WPLG. “They were screaming. They were saying, ‘We got that gay faggot.’”
Sanford said the attacks have taken place since last year and singled out the student who threw her to the ground, saying the youth one day “embarrassed me in front of everybody.”
“He stood on top of the stage and said to me, ‘I’m going to knock the gay out of him,'” Sanford claimed.
Sanford called the situation at the school “horrible” and said it has “been a living hell.”
“I didn’t even want to live anymore,” Sanford added, “because I felt like, ‘You’re not OK with my sexuality. Why should I be around for you to like me?’”
Sanford’s aunt, Raquel Showers, told WPLG that she has witnessed a change in Sanford since the bullying began, including that she had spoken about experiencing suicidal ideation because of the bullying.
“Hearing that, it just makes me cry,” Showers said.
Sanford told NBC News, “I just kept thinking, ‘Why should I be here? Why are you beating me up for being myself?’ He put me through hell.”
Broward County Public Schools told NBC Miami that it would investigate the incident, calling school safety their “highest priority” and saying Deerfield Beach’s leadership was “taking this incident seriously and is working with law enforcement in its investigation.”
“Any students involved will face appropriate school disciplinary consequences in accordance with the codebook for student conduct,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Tatiana Williams, the co-founder and executive director of Trans Inclusive Group, told NBC Miami that news of the attack took her back “to my own issues that I experienced when I was younger.”
“I think it’s important that we respect people the way we want to be respected, right?” she said. “It just goes back to human courtesy and human dignity, and making sure parents at home are teaching their kids what to do and what not to do.”
Last month, the Indian River School Board voted to remove Ban This Book, by Alan Gratz, from its shelves, overriding its own Florida district book-review committee's decision rejecting a challenge to the book.
The children's novel follows a fictional fourth-grade student who creates a secret library of banned books in her locker after her local school board bans those titles.
Indian River School Board members said they disliked how it referenced other books that have been removed from schools and accused it of "teaching rebellion of school board authority."
A federal judge struck down several administrative rules and part of a law placing restrictions on access to gender-affirming care for both minors and adults, declaring them to be unconstitutional.
On Tuesday, June 11, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, issued an order permanently blocking Florida state officials from enforcing a ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender youth.
Florida is currently one of 25 states with such restrictions in place.
Hinkle's ruling also blocks Florida officials from enforcing rules approved by the Florida Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine in order to comply with the law.
On May 30, Cobalt Sovereign, a student at Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, entered the boys' bathroom and used one of the stalls. But another student looked over the stall and began harassing her, calling her anti-LGBTQ slurs while hurling insults at her.
Sovereign left the restroom, only to be trailed down the hall by the student and two others.
She got up the coverage to confront them, but when she turned to verbally confront her harasser, he punched her in the mouth.
"He had no reason to have anything against me," the 17-year-old told Minneapolis NBC affiliate KARE. "I've never talked to him, never done anything negative to him. And I was insulted and then eventually hit in the jaw.
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