Evanston, Illinois, school board member Elisabeth Lindsay-Ryan earlier this month claimed she was the victim of a misogynistic and homophobic hate crime. The problem, however, is that no one is willing to share the police report she allegedly made of the incident.
Lindsay-Ryan wrote a statement that was released by the District 65 school board on January 11, The College Fix reported.
“This weekend I was the target of a hate crime. The motive of the perpetrator was clear – my car and personal belongings ransacked along with a message of homophobic hate language prominently displayed. There was nothing stolen – this wasn’t a burglary. It was the intent to terrorize. While this experience was both heartbreaking and terrifying for my family, it is a result of white supremacy colluding with misogyny and homophobia to inflict the most harm possible. While homophobia was utilized in an attempt to silence me, it is not working in isolation, it is part of a greater collaboration to derail my commitment to racial equity. I feel compelled to join Board leadership in issuing a message to our community that offers important context for this occurrence,” Lindsay-Ryan wrote.
Evanston is a suburb of deeply progressive Chicago.
The statement was included in a press release written by Lindsay-Ryan and Board of Education President Anya Tanyavutti. The two wrote that “Violent situations fueled by white supremacist rage and anxiety that might have felt far away, such as last week’s attack by insurrectionists of the US Capitol Building, continue to hit closer to home.”
The Fix sought confirmation of the alleged hate crime (since almost all such allegations turn out to be false). The outlet reached out to Tanyavutti twice in two weeks asking if she had seen the police report Lindsay-Ryan allegedly filed and if she could provide a copy. She did not respond.
Lindsay-Ryan also did not respond to repeated requests for a copy of the police report or for an update on the supposed investigation into her allegations. She didn’t answer a phone call or return a voicemail regarding the police report either. The voicemail was left on her business answering machine. Lindsay-Ryan runs a consulting firm focused on “equity, diversity, and inclusion.” She didn’t respond to emails sent to her school board email address or her business email address, nor did she respond to a Facebook message sent to her business page.
The school board vice president didn’t respond to the Fix’s requests sent to her District 65 email address and her professional email address at DePaul University, though the latter suffered a technical error.
Melissa Messinger, the school board’s director of communications, responded to the Fix’s request by sending them the press release from January 11 and telling the outlet she would forward their request to a public records coordinator. The Fix hasn’t received a follow-up.
The outlet asked the Evanston Police Department for a copy of the police report or any evidence to support the allegations, but they refused to hand it over and told the outlet to file a Freedom of Information Act request.
So, the Fix did, on January 20. Seven days later, on January 27, “the city’s public record database sent an email to The Fix extending the search deadline to February 3,” the outlet reported. The automated email added that the “requested records have not been located and additional efforts are being made to locate them.”