When considering the judges on the sample ballot, I remembered that Broniec and Gooch tried to block the abortion question from appearing on the ballot, so many are planning to vote against retaining them. Then I saw a name that caused my stomach to sink. Judge Craig Kennedy Higgins. I weighed the pros and cons of tearing off this scab and sharing my story, and I still don’t know what the pros are, but I feel I have to speak out.
On the evening of October 12, 2022, two gay white men caused a racial incident at Grey Fox Pub, and then spent a year harassing the entire 3700 block of Potomac, which is bookended by Grey Fox on one end, the home I share with my husband, Kage, on the other. The pair, who are banned from nearly all of the city’s gay establishments, repeatedly wailed on the horn late at night and then drunkenly berated anyone who came outside to confront them.
While they had confrontations with numerous neighbors, Kage and I were their primary targets. Animal Control was called multiple times. On news articles about Black crime suspects, they would post that Kage matched the suspect’s description. They’d call 911 saying a woman was being assaulted by a Black man, leading to tense interactions with first responders, who didn’t automatically believe us when we said this was swatting and that no woman lived here. They placed a sex ad instructing numerous men to come into the house in search of a woman who wanted a rape fantasy scenario. This resulted in two men actually entering our home, and others attempting to. When one intruder reached into his pocket upon encountering me, I fully expected to be shot.
On March 14, 2023 we were granted an Ex Parte Order of Protection, which the pair violated by tearing up our garden, covering my car with the destroyed plants, and yelling at the house.
About a month later we sought to extend the order. Judge Craig Kennedy Higgins looked at us and, before hearing any evidence, lectured us about how people with real issues couldn’t be heard that day because he had to deal with “this circus.”
I knew then that this was not only going to be pointless, but brutal. I wanted to get up and leave, but that didn’t feel like an option.
We had hired an attorney, and were armed with a mountain of evidence including video and a recorded confession. Higgins showed absolutely no interest in our testimony, or in reviewing the evidence. He didn’t seem to care that the emergency order was violated. He had to repeatedly scold the respondents for their rowdy behavior, and he called them “children,” but allowed them to cross examine us about our sex life.
In the end, he said our lives weren’t in danger, and we can’t use the courts to cancel people we don’t like. Emboldened, the pair soon came to my workplace where they mugged the 60-something female receptionist while calling her a whore.
Higgens’ inaction led to a neighborhood being repeatedly woken and harassed, and a woman being mugged. With the stroke of his pen, he could have served the citizenry of St. Louis. He preferred not. If it wasn’t anti-gay bias, I can’t imagine the reason.
I’m under no illusions that our story will derail Judge Higgins’ career, but I hope that calling attention to his flagrant disregard will somehow lead to LGBTQ+ St. Louisans being treated more justly than we were.
