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Alleged Racial Attack on Utah 14-Year-Old by Five Anglo Students

He says he then was punched repeatedly in the face and back until he lost consciousness for a few seconds.

"I was lying on the snow with a black eye, a bloody nose, a bloody upper lip and blurry vision," he wrote in his statement to West Valley City police. "I do not know any of these kids except for [one]. . . . He was in my pre-algebra class last year."

After a stranger stopped and drove him home, the boy's parents took him to Granger Medical Clinic, where medical personnel called an ambulance that took him to Pioneer Valley Hospital's emergency room. He was treated for swelling around his eyes, cuts from the braces in his mouth, a bump on his forehead and head trauma.

"I don't know why they wanted me to fight them," said the boy, who was discharged from the hospital Monday evening. "I know some people fight after school for the heck of it, and maybe because I'm Chinese they thought I would make a good fight."

The next day, when the boy and his mother reported the incident to Valley Junior High officials, he was suspended for two days. One of his alleged attackers was suspended for at least four days.

"Four of the six witnesses we interviewed said [the Asian American boy] started the fight, so we are treating this as a mutual-combatant situation," Vice Principal Kirby Bower said Thursday. "We have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting, and it is punishable by one to five days of suspension."

Principal Tim Frost added, "We looked at this very seriously, and we dealt with the other young man with appropriate legal and school action."

The boy's mother, Fan Kwan, is distressed that the suspension for fighting will stay on her son's permanent school record.

"Here my son has been the target of hate. He only kicked back once in self-defense. Why should he have fighting on his record?" she asked. "He works very hard in school and wants to apply to the International Baccalaureate program and a good university. It's not right that this should hurt his future."

But Bower says the suspension appears on a record only accessible to school administrators. "Personally, I don't see how it can hinder his future," he said.

West Valley City Police Capt. Craig Black says prosecutors soon may press juvenile assault charges against the boy who allegedly attacked Kwan's son.

"We will log this as a biased crime because there were racial overtones," Black said. "Kids will look at any difference and say cruel things, so we don't know if the only motivation for the fight was that the kid is Asian."

If that were the case, however, the assault could be categorized as a hate crime under federal law, but not Utah code, according to Salt Lake County District Attorney spokesman Kent Morgan.

"We [Utah] have a hate-crime statute, but it's unconstitutional," Morgan said. "And every year the Legislature fails to enact a new one. So the fact that a crime is logged as biased has no meaning to [prosecutors]."

But state Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake City, hopes to change that. He is sponsoring House Bill 85, which would provide enhanced penalties for perpetrators who select their victims based on prejudice against the victim's race, color, disability, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or gender.

"In Utah, 65 hate crimes were reported last year and 80 were reported the year before, with a surge in hate crimes against Arab Americans after Sept. 11," he said. "People need to realize that hate crimes are different from assault and that we're missing a tool to hold people accountable for this kind of behavior."

A similar bill failed last year after the Winter Olympics.

That worries many in Utah's Chinese American community, where the West Valley City boy's family spends much of its time. His father is the conductor of the Salt Lake Chinese Choir and his mother is president of the Utah Chinese Women's Association.

"We are all pretty troubled by this incident and the lack of legal protection against hate crimes," said Jimmy Lu, former president of Utah's Organization of Chinese Americans and current chairman of the Utah Chinese Heritage Foundation. "And the threat of racial hate crimes exists for all minorities in Utah, because your race is something you cannot hide."

In the past, Lu says he has instructed his own children to ignore comments such as "Chink" and "hong-kong-ching-chong" at school.

"Typically, Asians are not an outspoken minority group," Lu said. "But we have our limits. Nobody likes to be bullied, and everyone deserves legal protection from hate crimes."