Derek Henkle
(1983 - living) U.S.A.
Former student, activist
By the age of five, Derek Henkle knew he was different from other boys growing up in Reno, Nevada. By the time he got to high school, Derek was openly gay and paid the price for it. Henkle said that since he was 14, other high school students beat him up and threatened him, while school officials failed to protect him, investigate his claims of harassment, or punish the students who were responsible.
"The largest incident," Henkle said on Good Morning America, "was when I was walking back from lunch and in the middle of my school parking lot, a group of six students surrounded me and pulled up a lasso and said 'let's string down the fag and drag him down the highway.' They got the lasso around my neck three times".
After he broke free and hid inside the school, a teacher called the principal's office, saying she thought both he and she were in danger and to send help to the classroom as soon as possible. It took more than an hour for administrators to send help, and Henkle said he was later sent home on a school bus, where he feared the same bullies would attack him again.
 After the lasso incident, Henkle transferred to a different school in Reno. Again, he was beaten by a group of guys in a school parking lot, he said. Two school security guards just watched, and did not intervene, Henkle said. One principal told him to "stop acting like a fag," Henkle said.
Henkle said his teachers allowed other students to call him "fag" and "homo" in the classroom, and he believes that this paved the way for the abuse to snowball into beatings.
All told, he transferred twice. At one point, a school official told him that sexual orientation was not a classroom issue, but a bedroom issue, and should stay at home.
Henkle said the abuse continued for two years until he was 16, when he left the public school system to seek a high school equivalency diploma at an adult learning center. Henkle felt that he was driven out of the district, after he had gone to every high school within it.
He eventually dropped out of school and left Reno and is now a fulltime activist, helping other gay teens cope with the kind of harassment he experienced. He earned his high school degree after moving away to Atlanta.
Derek successfully sued the Washoe County, Nevada, school district for failing to protest him from anti-gay harassment; in addition to a US$451,000 settlement, there will be changes to the district's antiharassment policies to better protect gay and lesbian students.
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