Editor’s notice, March 13, 5:30 pm: On March 13, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s workplace launched a part of a report saying Nex Benedict’s dying was a suicide, an overdose attributable to a mixture of diphenhydramine (generally referred to as Benadryl) and fluoxetine (generally, Prozac). For extra on the main points of the case and the circumstances that preceded his dying, learn our unique story, printed March 6, under.
We all know a gender-nonconforming teen in an Oklahoma highschool is useless. We don’t know a lot else.
Nex Benedict didn’t have a protracted and troubled historical past with the women who fought with him the day earlier than his dying on February 8. In keeping with his grandmother and adoptive guardian, Nex had drawn bullies and harassment because the begin of his sophomore 12 months at Owasso Excessive Faculty West within the fall. These ladies, nevertheless, barely knew Nex.
Nex was an Indigenous 16-year-old scholar residing in Owasso, Oklahoma. At dwelling, he advised his household he was nonbinary and used they/them pronouns; in school, he additionally used he/him pronouns and advised a former accomplice that he was trans.
He has been described as a whip-smart straight-A scholar, a gifted artist who cherished animals, particularly his cat, Zeus. He had a supportive boyfriend who Nex helped come out to his dad and mom. He cherished enjoying Minecraft and favored to make up recipes within the kitchen. Associates known as him “adventurous” and “fiery.”
After a lot harassment, that fiery temperament could have led him to face up for himself. Lower than 24 hours later, Nex Benedict could be useless.
The response of the native and state authorities to his dying — together with complicated statements by the Owasso Police Division on the trigger — has pushed each Nex and Oklahoma into the nationwide dialog. The weeks since Benedict died have been a storm of rampant misinformation, irritating non-answers from authorities, and distracting facet discussions in regards to the political extremists who’ve glommed onto the controversy. The incident has additionally introduced elevated scrutiny of Benedict’s faculty district from the Division of Training, which introduced on March 1 that it could be launching an investigation into whether or not the varsity violated Benedict’s nondiscrimination rights beneath Title IX.
All of it quantities to a harrowing dialog about this period of aggressive anti-trans sentiment, and the actual trans youngsters who’re paying the price.
Nex Benedict’s dying occurred after an incident in a college rest room
On the afternoon of February 7, Benedict was taking part in a college disciplinary program alongside three first-year ladies. Although they barely knew one another, Benedict mentioned the women engaged in mocking him and his mates “due to the way in which that we costume.” He defined this in an interview with a college useful resource officer later that day, captured on police bodycam footage that has since been launched to the general public.
As the women entered a ladies’s rest room — which Benedict was legally required to make use of because of a 2022 Oklahoma legislation requiring public faculty college students to make use of the restroom for the intercourse they have been assigned at start — Benedict threw water at them from a water bottle he was carrying.
In response, Benedict mentioned the three ladies began bodily attacking him, grabbing his hair. After Benedict shoved one of many assailants right into a towel dispenser, “they acquired my legs out from beneath me, acquired me on the bottom, and began beating the shit out of me,” he advised the officer.
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The assault was so violent that Benedict says he “blacked out.” Sue Benedict, Benedict’s grandmother and adoptive father or mother, later mentioned he was left lined in bruises. Regardless of Benedict allegedly being knocked unconscious, and regardless of surveillance video displaying him showing to sway on his toes whereas strolling, nobody at Owasso known as for medical providers or police “per district protocols” — a incontrovertible fact that reportedly left Sue Benedict “livid.” As a substitute, faculty directors suspended Benedict for 2 weeks. It’s unknown whether or not the women obtained related punishment; the varsity’s assertion careworn that “any notion that the district has ignored disciplinary motion towards these concerned is just unfaithful.”
The varsity later launched a assertion declaring that the entire events concerned “walked beneath their very own energy” to the nurse’s workplace, the place they have been examined and cleared by the nurse. The nurse did, nevertheless, counsel that Benedict voluntarily endure a extra thorough medical examination.
Later that day, Sue Benedict took him to a hospital and summoned an officer to attempt to provoke prices of assault in opposition to Benedict’s attackers. Faculty useful resource officer Caleb Thompson discouraged Benedict from pursuing the case, telling him that by throwing the water on the women, he “primarily began it … it’s a mutual battle.” Sue Benedict then declined to press prices. (The Owasso Police Division didn’t return a request for remark.)
“I acquired jumped in school 3 on 1,” Benedict texted a relative later. “[I] needed to go to the ER… if I’m nonetheless dizzy and nauseous within the morning I might need a concussion.”
The following morning, Sue Benedict positioned a name to 911, stating that Benedict had fallen unconscious and seemed to be “posturing,” exhibiting involuntary motions that may point out mind trauma. Benedict returned to the hospital however was pronounced useless quickly after arrival.
From that second on, questions on what truly occurred to Benedict, who he was, and what may or ought to have been finished to guard him solely grew louder.
The circumstances of Benedict’s dying are as complicated as they’re angering
Initially, everybody from relations to media retailers contributed to confusion in regards to the primary info of Benedict’s life: what his identify was, how he recognized, which pronouns he used, what his Indigenous heritage was. A number of media reviews have described Benedict as two-spirit, which is a conventional Indigenous idea that describes a 3rd nonbinary gender; it’s unclear, nevertheless, that Benedict recognized as two-spirit.
Threats have been made in opposition to the varsity; Benedict’s household made a plea in opposition to being bullied. And with no medical expert’s report or toxicology outcomes forthcoming almost a month later, the most important supply of uncertainty and battle stays: What truly brought on Benedict’s dying?
Officers did provoke a proper investigation into Benedict’s dying, executing a search warrant on the faculty on February 9 and gathering written statements from faculty officers. Regardless of stating to the Unbiased that “all prices might be on the desk” for Benedict’s assailants as soon as a reason for dying was confirmed, the Owasso police launched a follow-up assertion on February 21 that appeared to strongly insinuate that Benedict’s dying was unconnected to the battle.
“Whereas the investigation continues into the altercation,” the report acknowledged, “preliminary data from the medical expert’s workplace is {that a} full post-mortem was carried out and indicated that the decedent didn’t die on account of trauma … additional feedback on the reason for dying are presently pending till toxicology outcomes and different ancillary testing outcomes are obtained.”
In an interview with Fashionable Info, Owasso Police Division Public Info Officer Nick Boatman additional clarified that the medical expert had “emphasised they’re ready for toxicology,” which he took as a “pink flag,” and that he was “assuming after I get that [toxicology report] again, one thing’s going to be there.” The police later clarified that the battle has not been dominated out as a reason for dying.
In response to the extensively held notion that Benedict was a sufferer of anti-queer and anti-trans bullying and violence, communities throughout the nation have held vigils for Benedict.
On February 26, a bunch of Owasso college students — estimates ranged from 20 to over 40 — walked out of sophistication to protest the bullying that preceded Benedict’s dying. They have been joined by neighborhood members and college students from different colleges. Previous to the protest, dad and mom have been knowledgeable that college students who participated within the walkout could be marked absent from lessons except they obtained written permission from a father or mother to take part.
Questions linger about how a lot bullying Benedict endured, and why Owasso Excessive Faculty didn’t present extra concern for Benedict after an altercation by which his head was slammed in opposition to the ground. In an emailed assertion, Jordan Korphage, the director of communications for Owasso Public Faculties, advised Vox that the district “take[s] reviews of bullying very severely” and that “all reported bullying accusations are investigated by directors on the faculty website by which they happen, and are reviewed by the district’s Director of Security and Safety.” Korphage mentioned the varsity had no data of earlier incidents between these college students previous to February 7 and added, “To the district’s data, there have been no reported bullying incidents by Nex or on Nex’s behalf through the 2023-2024 faculty 12 months.”
Out of a perception that Benedict endured gender-based discrimination, the Human Rights Marketing campaign filed a grievance in opposition to the Owasso faculty district with the DOE, which subsequently introduced on March 1 that it could be investigating the varsity. In a assertion to NBC Information, a spokesperson for the varsity district known as the allegation “with out advantage.”
The investigation factors towards the bigger nationwide dialog about trans youngsters — and the larger query of whether or not, as a substitute of defending everybody else from college students like Nex Benedict, it’s time to battle to guard youngsters like Nex from everybody else.
Nex Benedict lived as a trans child in a state that legally ostracized him
Since 2022, Oklahoma has been on the forefront of a wave of anti-trans laws geared toward blocking trans individuals from well being care entry, forcing transgender college students to make use of loos and locker rooms that don’t align with their id, criminalizing gender-affirming well being care, and stopping trans individuals from legally figuring out as their appropriate gender.
A 2023 evaluation by a state watchdog group discovered that state legislators had “launched 40 payments limiting LGBTQ Oklahomans’ healthcare entry, inclusion in colleges and choices for self-expression this legislative session.” This 12 months, that quantity is even increased: a staggering 54 payments — the very best within the nation.
The ostensible aim of those legal guidelines is to withstand what Oklahoma training superintendent Ryan Walters has known as “radical gender concept.” However the impact is undoubtedly the cultural and literal erasure of trans individuals.
The double commonplace this setting creates may be each weird and laborious to fathom in its cruelty. In June 2023, the Oklahoma Division of Training, beneath Walters, launched a YouTube video titled “Defending College students from Leftist Social Experiments by Upholding the Legislation.”
The video’s topic — as advised by the emotionally incendiary use of edited information footage, interviews, and inventory footage of a scared-looking little lady — is the alleged assault of a cis lady by a trans lady, who was misgendered all through the video. The video portrayed the trans lady as a violent predatory male who wanted to be stored out of women’ loos for the protection of cisgender ladies.
To date, Walters has mentioned nothing about defending trans kids from violence directed at them by cisgender teenagers. As a substitute, although calling Benedict’s dying a tragedy, he advised ABC he desires “the main focus to be on the fundamentals and training,” insisting he “is not going to play woke gender video games, [and] is not going to again right down to a woke mob.” (Walters’ workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
Walters’s anti-trans insurance policies and much more anti-trans rhetoric have been the main focus of ongoing backlash. On February 28, lots of of state and nationwide activist teams known as for his resignation, arguing he had “foster[ed] a tradition of violence and hate in opposition to the 2SLGBTQI+ neighborhood in Oklahoma colleges.”
In his most controversial transfer, Walters appointed anti-trans MAGA influencer Chaya Raichik to serve on a media advisory committee for the Oklahoma faculty library system; Raichik is the creator behind the anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok social media accounts. (Raichik will not be an Oklahoma resident and advised the Washington Put up she has solely visited the state as soon as.)
Previous to this appointment, Raichik used her infamous social media presence to focus on academics at varied Oklahoma colleges, accusing them of spreading a “woke” liberal agenda, normally concerning assist for queer and trans teenagers.
These included one among Benedict’s former academics, Tyler Wrynn. After Wrynn posted a video message of assist for queer and genderqueer college students to his TikTok web page in 2022, Raichik amplified it and began a viral pile-on. Wrynn subsequently resigned — however not earlier than receiving dying threats and accusations of “grooming” kids.
Benedict, who had been one among Wrynn’s college students, was reportedly “very indignant” about Raichik’s focusing on of his trainer. (Wrynn spoke at a February 25 vigil for Nex.)
Following Benedict’s dying, some native officers have been outraged at Raichik for her position in stoking anti-trans violence of their neighborhood. For her half, Raichik advised the Washington Put up that Benedict’s dying was “horrible,” but additionally repeatedly misgendered him, described gender variance as “a psychological sickness,” and spoke of eager to “eradicate gender ideology from public life.” (Raichik didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
This rhetoric, which basically questions the proper of trans individuals to exist, has arguably contributed to a deeply poisonous political setting not simply in Oklahoma however throughout the nation — one by which anti-LGBTQ bigotry is more and more changing into accepted coverage. Whereas some Republican lawmakers may categorical sympathy towards victims like Benedict, their occasion’s political machine is actively engaged, each at a nationwide and state-by-state degree, in taking away even essentially the most primary protections for queer and trans youngsters.
State Sen. Tom Woods admitted as a lot throughout a February 23 city discussion board, when he took time to answer Benedict’s dying within the worst means — by repeatedly referring to Benedict and different LGBTQ individuals as “filth.”
“We’re a Republican state — supermajority — within the Home and Senate. I signify a constituency that doesn’t need that filth in Oklahoma,” Woods mentioned.
“After I heard the information of Nex Benedict … I discovered the information predictable and inevitable,” former Oklahoma trainer Tyger Songbird wrote for information journal LGBTQNation. “The tradition and local weather that Republicans have fomented, the place politicians days after Nex’s passing name LGBTQ+ individuals filth, helped precipitate such a tragedy.” Songbird resigned his place in 2022 after realizing “that hate was going to win.”
“That is all regardless of proof displaying that trans teen suicide threat dramatically reduces with the liberty to transition and stay of their gender id,” he wrote. “This all is going on regardless of proof displaying that simply having one supportive trainer and educator reduces suicide makes an attempt by LGBTQ+ teenagers by 40%.” The truth that Benedict was additionally one among North America’s weak Indigenous college students meant that his victimology was much more difficult.
In different phrases, Oklahoma’s dismantling of authorized protections for trans college students and their allies is actively placing them in danger. We nonetheless don’t know what killed Nex Benedict — however no matter it was, there’s no query that life was fraught for Nex and different college students like him. If you enact “measures designed to crack down on the lives and well-being of trans youngsters,” as my former colleague Emily St. James wrote in 2022, “you create an setting the place trans youngsters undergo … If these measures are carried out, plenty of trans individuals will needlessly die.”
At present, the loss is that this: a vibrant teen whom family and friends described as humorous, powerful, and endlessly sort. If solely being human have been sufficient to guard a weak baby from a system that’s decided to erase them.
“Greater than something, I want he would stroll again into class and every part could be regular once more,” one Owasso scholar mentioned at Nex’s vigil. “Though I’ve watched them be buried, I search for them wherever I’m going.”
