DJ Bell, a suspected child kidnapper whose defenders say he and his gay partner are victims of homophobic violence and a shoddy police investigation, goes on trial tomorrow. Jury selection begins today, as do the protests.
"We'll be here all week," Megan Pedersen said, on behalf of 17, or so, protesters outside the trial of DJ Bell at about 1 p.m.
Bell is accused of two counts of first-degree felony child kidnapping and one count of second-degree felony burglary. The presumed sentence for child kidnapping is 15 years to life in prison.
City Weekly featured the case in July.
His former neighbors accused him of luring their children to his home, but he has stated repeatedly that the children were distressed by a loud party at their home and sought comfort with him. Bell, and his boyfriend Dan Fair, were then beaten by a group of men from the party. Both were injured; Fair was hospitalized for three days. No charges have been filed against the attackers.
I asked Pedersen several questions about the trial and why she and others are protesting.
I don't know if it necessarily started out as homophobia. I think alcohol and hate mixed together and mob mentality lead to homophobic actions. The gay slanders, the homophobic words that were thrown at them during the beating, obviously leads us to believe that there was a lot of hate involved in this.
Are you a friend? What are they like? I hear DJ is a drag performer.No, it doesn't mean he's innocent, but what we would have liked to 
see is an investigation to prove that. There hasn't been an investigation. The lead detective never entered the home where the beatings took place. They showed up, found two gay men beaten two streets away from a recent homicide, and they went with it. It wasn't until a couple weeks later that we started pushing back and asked what happened. There were three other adults in that house. One of them wasn't interviewed for a month, the other two were never interviewed.
Oh yeah, yeah. They were charged immediately. He was charged immediately and it wasn't until our side broke the story about two weeks after all this had happened that we said something is wrong and we started getting support that we have now.
The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the attackers and pushed it off to South Salt Lake prosecutors and they haven't done anything either. How do they explain that?
For more information on the case published by friends of Bell and Fair, go to http://www.injustice801.com
