New York woman faces hate crime charges for targeting a visually impaired man in a burglary

Included in the long list of charges she’s up against are two burglary-as-hate-crime charges, one being a class “B” felony, which carries sentence of between five and 25 years if she is convicted.

Under New York’s Hate Crimes Act of 2000, a person who commits an offense can be charged with a hate crime for intentionally targeting someone with an actual or perceived disability. The state law also covers victims targeted due to race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age or sexual orientation.

As reported by Frank Donnelly of the Staten Island Advance, Natalya Fedyk, 35, of Tompkinsville, New York, allegedly stole the man’s wallet, cash, credit cards, a watch, his service dog’s registration card and other items. At Fedyk’s arraignment in May, Assistant District Attorney Adam Silberlight claimed she went to the apartment of the man, who is nearly blind, "to take advantage of him.”

Nicole Jorwic is director of rights policy at The Arc of the United States, the largest organization advocating for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in the country. She recently addressed disability hate crimes at a public briefing sponsored by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“What an awful situation,” she said of the Fedyk case. “But it’s a strong sign that the prosecutor labeled her crime as a hate crime. This case highlights that there are individuals who take advantage of perceived vulnerabilities of people with disabilities. And that needs to be called out and prosecuted as a hate crime so we can continue to improve the status of individuals with disabilities in our community.

“It’s important that we keep moving toward a fully inclusive society where people with disabilities walk alongside everybody else, that we show that their lives are important and that anything that’s mocking them or taking advantage of them is not going to be accepted by society.”

Jack Levin, who’s been studying hate crimes for more than 30 years, isn’t fond of the terminology, even though he’s partly responsible for it. Professor emeritus at Northeastern University and co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, Levin co-authored the first book on the topic: Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed, published in 1993. Bias Crimes would have been a better title, he said. But in the lexicon and legal world, “hate” it is.

“I can’t take it back,” he said, “and that’s kind of a shame."

“You don’t have to hate members of a group in order to commit a hate crime,” he explained. “It’s based on stereotypic thinking about members of a group. It’s the vulnerability that represents the difference between the perpetrator and the victim. And that’s certainly true here, the difference being disability status. It’s that vulnerability that makes this victim an easy target for the perpetrator who is looking to commit burglary.”

In an often-quoted speech, former FBI Director James Comey put it this way:

"Hate crimes are different from other crimes. They strike at the heart of one's identity. They strike at our sense of self, our sense of belonging. The end result is loss: loss of trust, loss of dignity and, in the worst case, loss of life."

Not every state has a hate crime law. While the District of Columbia and 45 states do, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Wyoming do not. And of the statutes that are on the books, only 32 include people with disabilities as a protected category. That’s where the federal law comes in, to help state and local jurisdictions investigate and prosecute crimes of this nature.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 expanded Civil Rights-era hate-crime protections to include people with disabilities, along with victims targeted due to actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, had a lot to do with that. He was part of a coalition formed during the Clinton Administration that pushed for inclusion of people with disabilities in the Shepard-Byrd Act. It took nearly 12 years of convincing, he said recently from his office in Washington, D.C. Not just for including people with disabilities, but for a federal law pass at all.

One of the arguments he and other advocates were up against was that, if you commit murder, you’ll be prosecuted for murder. Or, if you commit assault or robbery, you’ll be prosecuted for those offenses. Why does the country need a hate crime law?

“One of the major rationales for a federal law was to be a backstop for local communities not pursuing hate crimes,” Decker said. “What happens if the white sheriff doesn’t bother going after the guys who beat up a black person? What about not going after a gay bashing kind of thing? Hopefully it’s done at the local level, and that the people there are prepared and competent to do it. But the federal hate crime law is there to come in when there’s an indication that they’re not, for whatever reason, for their own biases or prejudices."

“Disability stuff falls off the table all the time,” he said. “I really, really feel strongly this is a serious justice issue for this population. Because I think there’s a real reluctance for local authorities to go to the trouble, if you will. That’s why a federal hate crimes bill with disability protection is necessary.”

After a nearly 12-year fight to include people with disabilities in the Shepard-Byrd Act, some of the first cases the U.S. Department of Justice took on were disability hate crime cases.

Since her arraignment in May on burglary, hate crime and other charges, Natalya Fedyk has stacked up criminal contempt charges for violating a protection order by returning to the man’s apartment building on several occasions. Most recently she was jailed for failing to show up in court.

Fedyk is due back in court July 24.