Oklahoma Trans Child Beaten to Death at School for Being Trans

The school, the state, and anti-trans activists are complicit in terrorism

Warning: This story contains details of fatal violence against a transgender teenager. If you’re an LGBTQ young person, dedicated LGBTQ crisis volunteers at Trevor Project are available around the clock. If you’re an adult, Trans Lifeline provides trans peer support at 877–565–8860. For anyone feeling helpless or hopeless, please call or text the National Suicide Lifeline at 988.

This is the story I hoped I would never have to write, but feared I would. I’m writing today with a grieving (and angry!) heart because stochastic terrorism has claimed the life of a 16-year-old transgender child, Nex Benedict, in Oklahoma. Nex and another transgender teen, whose identity is being withheld for safety reasons, were attacked by three older students in an Owasso High School restroom on February 7.

Nex did not survive.

The three girls reportedly knocked Nex to the ground while directing anti-transgender slurs at both trans students. Nex’s transgender friend has told reporters and Nex’s grandmother that at least one of the attackers “was pretty much repeatedly beating [Nex’s] head across the floor.”

The Cut is reporting that several students tried to pull the attackers off Nex and that eventually a “restroom monitor” succeeded in doing so. Other news sources say the restroom monitor is a teacher at Owasso High School.

Students, including Nex’s trans friend who was also attacked, say the teacher directed the attackers and Nex to the school office to be disciplined. They say Nex was unable to walk without support and had trouble expressing themself clearly.

They say administrators did not call an ambulance or report the assault to either the local police or the school staff police officer (SRO), even though Nex had obviously suffered great bodily harm after being beaten by students who are reportedly much larger than Nex.

The school instead called Sue Benedict, Nex’s grandmother and custodial caregiver. Sue has told reporters that when she arrived at the school office, she found Nex covered in bruises and scratches and not speaking coherently. She says administrators informed her they had suspended Nex from school for two weeks —for fighting — and that she must take Nex home to begin their disciplinary suspension.

Sue then drove Nex to the Bailey Medical Center in Owasso. Accounts are mixed and unclear, but at that point either hospital staff or Sue finally called the police. At that point, the school’s SRO arrived at the hospital to interview Sue and Nex. No reports have emerged regarding the details of that interaction.

In a statement to the LGBTQ news magazine The Advocate, Owasso Police Chief Dan Yancey confirmed that police did not learn of the assault until after Nex arrived at the hospital.

After the SRO interview, Nex was discharged from the hospital.

The next morning Sue was getting ready to take Nex to a medical appointment in Tulsa when Nex collapsed on the living room floor. Sue called an ambulance, but by the time it arrived, Nex had stopped breathing. They were transported to the hospital where they were declared dead.

Nex’s transgender friend and one of Sue’s friends have separately told reporters that doctors told Sue the cause of Nex’s death was “complications from brain trauma.” A police spokesperson told The Cut that police are waiting on toxicology and autopsy reports before filing any charges, adding that “all charges will be on the table” once the cause of death has been confirmed.

Let’s talk about violence against queer children and about terrorism

If you’re a trans person or somebody who closely follows LGBTQ news, you’re probably wondering why I say I hoped I would never have to write this story. “Wait!” I can hear you complain. “Violence against trans people and even trans children is nothing new!”

What about Brianna Ghey, the 16-year-old trans girl murdered in northwest England a year ago by two teenagers who were motivated in part by hatred of trans people?

What about the unidentified transgender 18-year-old who was stabbed 14 times at a birthday party in London, England on Feb 10, just two days after Nex died? Their attackers reportedly shouted anti-trans slurs as they stabbed her. She survived.

What about an accelerating stream of violent attacks against trans adults that the Human Rights Campaign calls an “epidemic?”

Yes, yes, and yes!

You’re right about all of that, and it’s all tragic. It should all serve as a warning sign that something about our society today is deeply dysfunctional and toxic.

You see, I’ve written about Owasso High School before, and I worried that LGBTQ kids there were in great danger from violent rhetoric.

The story I feared I would have to write was a story about a murder specifically at Owasso High School (or other Oklahoma high schools) where state political leaders, school district administrators, and anti-trans activist Chaya Raichik have focused intense hatred and ridicule on LGBTQ-affirming teachers, librarians, and children, especially transgender students. Raichik posts as Libs of TikTok on X (formerly Twitter) and has 2.8 million followers.

Nex knew all about that violent rhetoric and feared it

Raichik specifically targeted Nex’s school in 2022, attacking a teacher for supporting LGBTQ students. The school was then inundated with threats of violence, including bomb threats and death threats against specific LGBTQ teachers and students.

According to The Independent, Sue Benedict says Nex was aware of Raichik’s Libs of TikTok attacks, that Nex had “greatly admired” their supportive teacher, and that “Nex was very angry about [his forced resignation.]”

The school district forced Nex’s teacher to resign after Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters called him “unfit for the classroom.”

Walters recently named Raichik — who is a Brooklyn real estate agent with no education credentials or any higher education herself— to the Oklahoma library media advisory committee. She will help decide which books Oklahoma students are allowed to read. She’s made it clear she considers any books that portray LGBTQ people in a positive light are “disgusting,” “obscene,” and “pornographic.”

She frequently implies that LGBTQ people are disgusting. Sometimes she says so outright.

So does Superintendent Walters, who is no stranger to de-humanizing LGBTQ people. I wrote earlier this week that he forced the resignation of a respected public school principal who does drag on weekends at gay bars with some of his friends. I wrote about how Walters claims the man is a threat to children merely because he’s a gay man who enjoys drag:

He threatened to discipline the people who hired [the principal], declared that people who perform in drag should be disqualified from working as teachers or administrators, and announced that he has “proposed the most aggressive model in the nation for identifying and uprooting these folks from our schools.”

Identifying and uprooting. Uprooting like what? A toxic weed? Something worse? That’s how Walters talks about LGBTQ people, in public while children are listening. What did he suppose the results of such rhetoric would be? A child is dead. At what point will he be held accountable for the dehumanizing rhetoric that led directly to their death?

(For details of Raichik’s track record eliciting violence, and more on Walter’s frequent, de-humanizing hate speech, see Tucker Lieberman’s article from this morning, Gay and Trans Freedom Is Everyone’s Freedom.) Or see this Media Matters report for comprehensive details.

Stochastic terrorism claimed Nex as an inevitable victim

“Stochastic terrorism” is defined as “political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters to commit a violent act against the target of the speech.” Another way of defining it is “rhetoric that predictably leads to violence against individuals whose specific identities cannot be predicted.”

Nex died — Nex was beaten to death — as a result of the stochastic terrorism of Chaya Raichik, Superintendent Walters, and a host of media figures who routinely paint queer people as sick, dangerous, and evil.

The girls who beat Nex’s head against that restroom floor are directly culpable, of course, but they did not commit that act of ultra-violence in a vacuum.

That’s what I meant in my opening sentence!

I have been afraid of this story for close to two years! I’ve been terrified I would have to write that a child was murdered in a U.S. school because of terrorism — because educators, government officials, and anti-trans activists would so de-humanize transgender kids that one of those kids would suffer extreme violence.

And now it’s happened — predictably, with Nex as the unpredictable, specific victim.

Let’s talk about fear, rational and irrational, as we look at data

Media figures engaging in stochastic terrorism (fear mongering) regarding LGBTQ youth often paint queer young people as dangerous — as sexual threats to other children, especially in restrooms or changing areas.

The reality is starkly different.

Helping me prepare this story yesterday, sociologist Kaylin Hamilton directed me to two critical studies. This study demonstrates that trans/nonbinary youth in the U.S. are highly disproportionately likely to be sexually assaulted, in shocking numbers:

The 12-month prevalence of sexual assault was 26.5% among transgender boys, 27.0% among nonbinary youth assigned female at birth, 18.5% among transgender girls, and 17.6% among nonbinary youth assigned male at birth.

No credible data anywhere, by the way, has ever found trans youth likely to commit acts of violence or sexual assault.

So, while Raichik and Walters were stirring up hatred against trans people, they neglected Nex’s dangerous reality — that as a nonbinary youth assigned female at birth, Nex had a 27% statistical likelihood of being sexually assaulted in any given one-year period.

Was anyone paying attention to that danger?

Was anyone thinking about how to keep Nex safe? Was anyone concerned with helping Nex thrive, experience joy, and reach for their best human potential?

Well, one of Nex’s teachers tried, but Walters forced him out of his position, “rooted him out,” to use Walters’ own de-humanizing language.

Dr. Hamilton directed me to another important study that demonstrates the psychological harm (often severe) that kids like Nex suffer because of restroom debates, changing-room restrictions, and de-humanizing political rhetoric.

I guess we don’t have to worry about Nex’s mental health, though.

Not anymore. Nex is dead, killed by three kids shouting their hatred of transgender people, three kids who almost certainly learned their hatred from respected adult leaders who traffic in de-humanization.

Where do we go from here?

I’ve been so afraid I would have to write this story. I’ve shouted the dangers of stochastic terrorism from the rooftops. And now I’ve written it — because a child is dead, literally beaten to death for being transgender.

Will Nex’s death move Chaya Raichik, Superintendent Walters, and other media figures? Will people wake up to the dangers of violent rhetoric?

It’s not just transgender people at risk, you know. Just a few days before Nex was beaten to death, a government official in Utah elicited a deluge of specific threats against a cisgender high-school basketball player, wrongly implying the girl is transgender. Her father pulled her from school, fearing for her safety.

Last September, Medium writer Blackthelma wrote about Michelle Dionne Peacock, a cisgender Black woman murdered by a man who wrongly believed she was transgender. Them magazine also wrote about Peacock’s murder, in an article headlined, “Two Cisgender People Were Killed in Separate Attacks Motivated by Transphobia.”

Is this the kind of society any of us wish to live in — where being transgender or being perceived as transgender leads to violence and murder, even among children?

Well, it IS the society we live in. Right now. Today. Anti-trans violence rates are soaring, as reported by HRC in a link I shared above.

It’s up to all of us to do something about it. It’s up to all of us to ask media figures and elected officials to stop the hate speech and violent rhetoric that amounts to terrorism.

I’ll say it again:

A transgender child was just beaten to death by other children for the “crime” of existing openly as trans. If that can’t shock us into collective action to foster decency, can anything?

What will YOU do?

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