Everyone who signs this petition and I would like to ask you to recognize the history Montana has perpetuating, minimizing and covering up child sex and hate crimes. 

According to a recent article at the Daily Beast: 

[A] torts professor allegedly repeated gay slurs during class and allowed the class to do the same before mocking child sexual abuse. “Students jumped on the bandwagon and began making various discriminatory remarks during class throughout the first couple of months of the semester,” Robichaud told ABA Journal.

I grew up in Montana, and I can tell you this is neither a unique or shocking event to hear this language in a place like a law school. It, in fact, bewrays the attitude the dominant culture has in Montana about homosexuality, hate crimes and child rape. 

In Montana child sex crimes and hate crimes are not taken seriously or, worse, are covered up by the people in power. There is a predatory over-class that is allowed to prey on working class and indigenous people with impunity. These men are defended by instruments of the legal community like Judge G. Todd Baugh, who once described a rape victim as "low class". 

As one of Judge Baugh's "low class" victims (concerning his handling of the case of Christian Radio DJ and former deacon of Trinity Lutheran Elementary School Tom Speed) I can say that I did not get justice for any of my rapes, assaults nor the chemical attack that maimed me for life at Billings West High School in 1998 or 99. When I attended the University of Montana my dorm room door was regularly vandalized with notes that read "faggot". I was regularly called "faggot" out loud before several assaults on campus and around Montana. The older I get the more lucky I feel that I was not killed in Montana like Mr. Shepard for being different. 

The fact is there are thousands of working class and indigenous child-rape and hate-crime victims who have had the crimes against them minimized and covered up by the people in power in Montana. 

We would like to call for a full investigation statewide into how the police, prosecutors, principals and pastors handle hate crimes and child sex cases. This investigation should start with the understanding that this minimization of sex crimes and hate crimes starts at the top and lives in the law schools and school administrations of Montana. We would also ask you to call for a full investigation into every sex-crime case Judges G. Todd Baugh, William Spear and any other judge that has shown undo leniency to other powerful men have heard. The story of  these Judges' influence on Montana has not been fully told. 

Thank you for your time, 

LNSY and the undersigned