Bigotry drives out two victims

POLAND - Some will be tempted, when it's all said and done, to write it off as kids being kids. But what happened to Keri Fuchs and Linda Boutaugh was more than just a random act of vandalism by juveniles with too much free time on their hands.

It was a targeted attack on two women because they're lesbians. An attack that included anti-gay slurs spray-painted on a bedroom wall, smashed windows, upended furniture and - picture your own kid doing this - human feces smeared on the bathroom floor.

"I was in total shock," Fuchs said as she surveyed the damage Wednesday. "I felt like I was in a nightmare, and I kept telling myself I was going to wake up soon. But I didn't."

They've lived here together on Downey Lane since 2001. They met first on the Internet and then on the phone. And when they finally laid eyes on each other, each knew instantly that she'd found her soulmate. For Fuchs, 56, and Boutaugh, 50, the modest mobile home just off Route 122 seemed perfect at first.

"The neighbors were all friendly enough," Boutaugh said. "And we were so quiet that if you lived around here, you wouldn't even know we existed."

But the local kids knew. They'd tromp through the woods out back and, when Fuchs asked them to respect her private property, respond with words too vile to print here. They'd ride by on their bicycles and holler the same things whenever Fuchs and Boutaugh had the nerve to sit out in front of their home and enjoy a quiet summer evening.

One time, while the women weren't home, the kids even cut the clothesline and tore up the drying laundry.

It finally got so bad that the women decided this summer to move to East Millinocket, where Boutaugh grew up. They were there on one of their first moving trips when a neighbor called on June 30 and told them they'd better get back down here - the old Pontiac Parisienne that Boutaugh had spent months restoring had all its windows knocked out and it looked as though the house had been trashed, too.

"These paintings were all done by my mother," Fuchs said, pointing to the pictures with the shattered glass. "Look, this one even got torn. And they stole all kinds of things. . . . They even took the urn with my father's ashes. Why would someone take something like that?"

The answer to that will come soon enough. Sometime today, the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office and the Maine Attorney General's Office are expected to announce the results of their respective criminal and hate-crime investigations. All fingers will point to a pair of juveniles who, according to police, have admitted to leaving the two women's lives in shambles.

Fuchs and Boutaugh, who only this week have found the strength to start cleaning up the mess, will be in Portland's Monument Square at 11 a.m. Saturday for a rally organized on their behalf by Equality Maine. They're not the rally type, but they want all of Maine to know this is more than just child's play.

It's bigotry, plain and simple. And hard as it might be to fathom at these ages - are you listening, Mom and Dad? - it had to come from somewhere.

"What you see is what you learn," Boutaugh said, looking out at her soon-to-be ex-neighborhood. "Hate is learned at home."

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