Following Donald Trump’s stunning win in the election, a plague of hate crime hoaxes has been sweeping the country.
From California to Illinois to Louisiana, stories are cropping up of hate crimes perpetrated by Trump supporters that later prove to be fabricated by the so-called “victim” of the crime. Here is a roundup of the “hate crimes” identified as hoaxes so far, although there are other unsubstantiated stories that perhaps have not been identified as hoaxes because the perpetrator is more competent.
An openly bisexual senior at North Park University claimed she was the recipient of a homophobic note and hateful emails following Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election. But the school president has reported the notes were “fabricated.”
Taylor Volk said she found a note taped to her door that read “Back to hell” and “#Trump” and included homophobic slurs following the election, as well as several anonymous emails with similar messages. She reported the messages on her Facebook, and spoke to the press about the incidents. “I just want them to stop,” she told NBC News last week.
Volk also said she was confident the school would investigate. Indeed, the university’s president announced Tuesday the notes were a hoax, and that Volk is no longer enrolled at the university.
Asian student harassed while walking across a bridge
In a widely-shared Facebook post, an Asian student at the University of Minnesota claimed she was harassed by a white male as she was walking across a bridge in Minneapolis. The man told her to “go back to Asia,” Kathy Mirah Tu said in the post. She ignored him and kept walking across the bridge, but says he followed her and added: “Don’t you know it’s disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are talking to you?” He then allegedly grabbed her wrist, and she responded by punching him in the throat.
Tu claims the man called the police and accused her of assaulting him, and that police handcuffed her and checked her criminal background before letting her go with a warning. Both the local and university police departments released statements contradicting Tu’s narrative, however, saying they have no record of the confrontation she described. Tu did not respond to requests for comment from a local paper regarding her story, and has apparently deleted her Facebook account.
