Backlash to lenient sentence in gay bashing case

A group of local activists have planned a rally June 18 outside the Edward Brooke Courthouse to protest the sentence of Fabio Brandao, a 29-year-old Framingham man who pleaded guilty to taking part in a brutal gay bashing in the South End on Aug. 24. Boston District Court Judge Thomas C. Horgan imposed a two-year suspended sentence and mandatory completion of an anger management program on Brandao, but the Anti-Violence Project and the grassroots LGBT group Join The Impact Massachusetts plan to demonstrate to send the message that they believe the sentence was too lenient. Brandao pleaded guilty to nine charges, including four civil rights violations; he and three friends ambushed a group of four people in their mid-20s on Columbus Avenue who were returning home from the Roxy nightclub, and the assailants kicked and punched two of the men in the head, leaving them with cuts, bruises and mild concussions. Brandao and his assailants allegedly called the victims “faggots” during the assault.”It’s just inconceivable that Brandao could have left two men brain-injured in the street on Columbus Avenue and then walk out of court with an anger management assignment. It shocks the conscience, and it points to a deep-seated problem the Anti-Violence Project has struggled with since 1986, and that’s that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people don’t get equal protection under the law,” said Don Gorton, chair of the Anti-Violence Project. See Backlash to lenient sentence in gay bashing case
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