{"id":245886,"date":"2021-05-27T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T17:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=245886"},"modified":"2021-06-29T14:08:24","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T19:08:24","slug":"down-syndrome-center-vandalism-hate-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/down-syndrome-center-vandalism-hate-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Police charge suspect with felony civil-rights violation for vandalism of Down syndrome center"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Update 6\/29\/21<\/strong>: According to The Sacramento Bee<\/a>, police have arrested a man accused of vandalizing a center for children with Down syndrome in May, shortly after the center opened.<\/p>\n

49-year-old Alfred Busby was arrested for the vandalism of GiGi’s Playhouse in Roseville, a national nonprofit that works with children with Down syndrome and their families. The incident, which involved the defacing of images of children, is being treated as a hate crime by police. Busby was arrested on felony charges of committing a civil-rights violation and committing vandalism causing more than $400 in damage.<\/p>\n

5\/27\/21<\/strong>: A newly-opened Down syndrome center in Roseville, California, was vandalized, and police have called it a hate crime. Gigi’s Playhouse offers educational, therapeutic, and career-building programs for individuals with Down syndrome, with 54 locations across the United States and Mexico. Services are completely free, are funded by donations, and volunteers make up much of the staff.<\/p>\n

One of the newest locations is Gigi’s Playhouse Sacramento, which just held its grand opening earlier this month. Prominently featured were posters of children with Down syndrome, including a little boy named Jayden. “Jayden was so excited to have his picture prominently displayed on the windows of the brand new GiGi\u2019s Playhouse Down Syndrome Achievement Center in Sacramento, CA,” Gigi’s Playhouse founder Nancy Gianni wrote on Facebook<\/a>. “But only 6 days after their grand opening, this hateful act happened to him and others on those front windows \u2014 windows that are designed to show strength, courage, and kindness.”<\/p>\n

Using a permanent marker, someone wrote that Jayden was “r*******,” and said that “incest isn’t right.” Barely a week earlier, the community had embraced the new center, with over 500 people attending the grand opening celebration. Yet someone still chose to target the center with a public display of hate speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt destroyed those photos. It was basically hate-filled, slanderous speech,\u201d April Davila, board vice president for Gigi’s Playhouse Sacramento, told the Sacramento Bee<\/a>. “To have it open for not even a full week and then find this awful hate speech written on one of our welcome windows was just an absolute gut punch,” Nicole Harrigan, the board president, said to KCRA<\/a>, echoing Davila’s sentiments.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0AWESOME: Gucci\u2019s first model with Down syndrome goes viral<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gigi’s Playhouse Sacramento also released a statement pointing out that this kind of discrimination is far from unusual in the disability community. \u201cThis is not the first experience with hate speech toward the Down syndrome community,\u201d the news release said. \u201cPeople with Down syndrome face lifelong discrimination and are often targeted for the disability that is written on their face. This act of hate speech was, quite literally, written on the images of local Sacramento-area children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacramento police confirmed that they were treating the vandalism as a hate crime. Meanwhile, people are horrified that this community was targeted in such an awful way. \u201cOur kids and these adult participants that come to Gigi\u2019s, all they want is to have friends and be loved, and they would never judge the people who came and did this,\u201d Harrigan said. \u201cThey would forgive them in a heartbeat. They\u2019re better people than I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update 6\/29\/21: According to The Sacramento Bee, police have arrested a man accused of vandalizing a center for children with Down syndrome in May, shortly after the center opened. 49-year-old Alfred Busby was arrested for the vandalism of GiGi’s Playhouse in Roseville, a national nonprofit that works with children with Down syndrome and their families. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":245887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[15,7,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nPolice charge suspect with felony civil-rights violation for vandalism of Down syndrome center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A newly-opened center for children and adults with Down syndrome in California was vandalized in what police are calling a hate crime.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/down-syndrome-center-vandalism-hate-crime\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Police charge suspect with felony civil-rights violation for vandalism of Down 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