Subject: They carved "fag" on his abdomen....

Teen hospitalized; anti-gay epithet carved into his body with pen One minute, 17-year-old Adam Colton was at home, getting ready to drive to class at San Marin High School in Novato. The next thing the openly gay high school senior knew, he was lying in a hospital bed six hours later -- badly bruised and cut on his face, chest, abdomen and back. On his forearm and abdomen, someone had carved into his flesh with a pen: "Fag." Friday's attack was the second time this school year that Colton has been beaten in an apparent hate crime. Police said the first attack occurred on Sept. 15, just a week after Colton, who had transferred from Marin Academy, had come out of the closet at school and formed a student group called Gay-Straight Alliance. The trauma of the second attack apparently wiped out Colton's memory of the period immediately preceding it. "When I woke up in the hospital, the first thing I thought was that I'd had a diabetic emergency or was in a car accident," Colton said Saturday as he recovered at his Novato home. "Yesterday as a whole was pretty cloudy for me." Though he doesn't remember driving to school, Colton said police found his locked car in the school parking lot, "which makes it a strong possibility that I was beaten up on campus," he said. Possibly hate-motivated School Principal Rudy Tassano was out of town and could not be reached for comment Saturday. Novato police Sgt. Jim Laveroni would say only that Colton had been assaulted and that it was possibly hate-motivated. But Colton's parents said they are convinced it was a hate crime and are asking members of the community to come forward to help identify the attacker or attackers. "There must be a witness. This happened in the middle of the day," said Jerry Colton, Adam's father. "I just urge parents, the community and the student body at large to step forward. If we don't, and if we allow these types of situations to take place, it will only cause further injury." Adam Colton said the word from other students was that he had wandered into a classroom after the attack, saying something about having been followed. Then he passed out. But the trouble started long before Friday. The day of the first attack, Colton's car was vandalized in the school's parking lot. Someone had taken several napkins, spread them on the hood of his car, and written a message in ketchup: "You bent-ass m----- f-----, get the f--- away," Colton said. Early that evening, he was grocery shopping for his parents. A group of three high school teens approached him, taunting him with anti-gay epithets. He went inside and did his shopping. When he came back out, the teens jumped him. The next week, he said, his car got keyed. The week after that, there was another ketchup message on his car. That weekend, someone wrote an epithet in lighter fluid on his family's driveway and tried to ignite it. Then there were the looks and the taunts at school, the kids who would pass him in the hall and make a hateful comment to their friends -- loud enough for Colton to hear -- about gays. It became too much for him. "I love going to school, but I was really starting to hate it," Colton said. The pressure was exhausting. Two weeks ago, he entered an independent study program -- attending San Marin only for his two favorite classes: creative writing and drama. Did he get any support? Colton said he wished he had gotten more support from Tassano after the first attack. "I feel like this may not have happened a second time if he had come to the plate and really put his foot down and said, "This will not happen again.'" Colton's father agrees that the school has failed to create a safe atmosphere for his son. He wants school officials to make teaching the value of diversity a priority. "Our son has had to reduce his class load at that school because it is difficult for him to walk down the hallway without some individual or some group of individuals saying something derogatory to him," Jerry Colton said. "It is certainly not a place where someone with even the most basic needs feels safe." In the first incident, police said Colton was attacked by three 17-year-old males in the parking lot of Lucky supermarket in downtown Novato -- the same place where, in 1995, 25-year-old Eddy Wu was stabbed several times by a man who allegedly said, "I wanted to kill me a Chinaman." Before attacking Colton, the three teens made several "disparaging remarks" to him, Sgt. Laveroni said. Colton was not able to identify his attackers from the first incident, and they were never caught. This time around, he's hoping he recovers some memory of the incident. In the meantime, school officials are looking into who was absent from class at the time he was beaten, Colton said. Friday's assault occurred almost a year after three San Marin students were suspended and one charged with disturbing the peace after a racial incident at a school basketball game. In that case, a group of students were allegedly yelling a racial epithet at some black players from Tamalpais High. The mood at the school after the attack on Colton was one of sadness, said sophomore Matt McLaughlin. "In the afternoon, the staff came around and went into all the classrooms," McLaughlin said. One counselor told students that Colton had been beaten again and was in the hospital. "Pray for him," McLaughlin remembered the counselor saying. "Now that this has happened, I'm not sure that I'll be going back to San Marin next Tuesday when school resumes," Colton said. " I don't feel comfortable on campus." When he decided to come out of the closet at San Marin, Colton said, several people asked him why he would take that chance at a place that had a reputation for intolerance. "I didn't want to keep it inside anymore," Colton said. ©1999 San Francisco Examiner