Krystal started high school as a typical freshman and remembers that her first year went fine. That summer, the teenager came out to her friends and family. When she returned to school as a sophomore, it was a different world.

“Word spread fast,” she remembers. “This group of girls started picking on me. I’d try to stay away from them and take different routes to class, but they’d find me. It seemed like they would hunt me down.”

What began as verbal harassment escalated to assault.

Krystal recalls one warm, sunny day when she ate lunch outside reading under a tree. “They swarmed me like bees. I was terrified. They surrounded me and were taunting me, saying things like ‘You’re going to hell!’. Then they dumped this liquid on me that smelled like rotten fish.”

For the first time, Krystal sought help.

The school resource officer told her nothing could be done because there were no witnesses. An administrator told her she was “asking for it” by being gay. “I never went back to school,” said Krystal. “I locked myself in my room. My mom didn’t know what to do to help me. I couldn’t even tell her what happened. I was depressed and suicidal. It was the lowest point in my life.”

A friend invited Krystal to join the LBGTQ Youth Project—a support group at AIDS Community Resources for young people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Krystal, now 20, credits the program with helping her turn her life around.

“I’ve learned amazing things about myself and the world,” she said. “Now I have the courage to fight against the way people are treated. I’ve met the kind of lifelong friends most people make in high school-I’d missed out on that experience. Now I have a great job that I love and I’m working on getting my GED. I’m a youth leader here urging all the younger kids not to drop out of high school. I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through.”

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