Published August 29, 2018

Bryan County’s most famous woman beater and child stalker Burney Clyde Crenshaw, age 43, has hired legal representation to defend him in a case involving his stalking and threatening a twelve-year-old girl.
 

During an August 27, 2018 hearing to defend himself over a protective order filed against him, Crenshaw showed up with attorney Thomas Neil Marcum.
 

Marcum, age 45, is with the Burrage Law Firm in Durant, OK, which is the county seat for Bryan County. The attorney has previously worked as an assistant district attorney for District 19, which is comprised of Atoka, Bryan, and Coal Counties. Bryan County has of course failed to prosecute any member of the Burney Crenshaw Gang in their conspiracy to mutilate a child. 

On April 14, 2014, a negative post about Marcum appeared online saying, “Beware of Attorney Thomas Marcum as he uses fear tactics and dos not play by the rules as far as pursuing a case or defendant. he follows people around in a creeper like way and lies and sends people text messages threatening them. Thomas Marcum has many complaints and negative ratings online as well. The attorney constantly harasses women in the Durant Oklahoma area and takes advantage of their lack of knowledge and what he thinks is weakness. little does he know these women are several steps head of him and laugh knowing he will be reported to the Attorney Generals office.”
 

Despite bringing an attorney to the hearing, when the plaintiffs – Maddie and her mother – did not have one of their own, the protective order remains in effect against Crenshaw.  
 

In 2006, Burney Crenshaw was convicted of domestic abuse assault and battery in the same court. He has a pattern of going after women and children having abused one woman and harassed both Maddie and her mother on different occasions. 

Jaime Crenshaw, age 37, began the social media controversy this month on the first day back to school for the students of Achille Elementary. However, it has now been discovered that back in April her husband Burney Crenshaw cornered preteen Maddie at a father/daughter dance and demanded to know her gender. Fortunately, her step-father Cory Rose entered and put a stop to Crenshaw’s stalking of the little girl. Crenshaw seemed to be overly interested in the child’s genitalia.  
 

Maddie’s school records, which revealed her as formerly being a male student from a school in Texas, were unlawfully released to the public by an unidentified Achille school teacher. This is how Burney Crenshaw learned of Maddie’s past and why he chose to harass the child at the dance.
 

The federal law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) makes it illegal to release confidential student records without written permission from the parent or eligible student. Penalties can include the loss of federal funding for the school involved.
 

Neither Achille Superintendent Rick Beene, nor his wife Principal Dana Beene have bothered to address the release of private records by the teacher. Rick Beene has a long history of homophobic behavior, as revealed in a previous Hate Trackers story.
 

Crenshaw married Jaime Ann Standifer in February 2004. It was the blending of what’s appears to be the Okie version of the Hatfields and McCoys.
 

There appears to be a long-running feud involving the Crenshaws and the Standifers that has seen several members of those families filing protective orders on each other and behaving like they are not accustomed to being out of the woods and among civilized people.    
 

Jaime Crenshaw’s brother, Jerry Clayton Standifer, has a number of active criminal cases in Bryan County, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after a former felony conviction, domestic abuse, public intoxication and three separate DUI’s. He’s had previous DUI’s in Tulsa County that sent him to prison and others in Marshall County. 

All told, there are 23 outstanding warrants in Oklahoma for Jaime Crenshaw’s brother.  
 

If the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office wishes to arrest Jerry Standifer, they can call Hate Trackers and we’ll provide his current phone number and address. He’s not that hard to find in Kemp, Sheriff Johnny Christian. All you have to do is your damn job.
 

Or are you protecting Jerry like you’re protecting Burney? 

Commentary

Published August 25, 2018
 

Note: The area of Little Dixie that includes Murray County, where Sulphur is, and Pontotoc County, where Ada lies, has long been considered to be among the most corrupt areas of Oklahoma. Just recently, a Murray County assistant district attorney let a violent child rapist walk without any prison time after he had abducted, tied up, and brutally raped a 13-year-old girl at the Falls Creek Baptist Church Camp. 

Years ago, this reporter overheard then Pontotoc County DA Bill Peterson and his assistant Chris Ross, who became DA and retired last year, joke about dragging black women behind their trucks. The Peterson/Ross duo, known for sending innocent men to the death chamber, were the subjects of author John Grisham’s The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.  

Take one inept small-town Oklahoma police chief, mix in one incompetent Little Dixie newspaper editor, and what do you get?  

A piss poor news article and a libel suit. 

Armed with a mail-order detecting kit, ace detective and police chief David Vaughn Shores, age 60 of Ash Drive in Sulphur, OK,  has outrageously tried to divert attention away from his incompetent investigation into threats made to the Oklahoma School for the Deaf (OSD) where serial bride Lajuan “Lou” Gayle Koehn Pachner Bickerstaff is employed as a nurse.

She is the current wife of Kevin Bickerstaff, who has been jettisoned by Frontier Airlines for threats the pilot made to the twelve-year-old transgender girl Maddie in Achille, OK.  

Sulphur’s finest quickly drew the conclusion that the threats to the transgender girl were being taken out of context and that Hate Trackers was behind the threats to the deaf school.

Publicly available records show Chief Shore's wife of 24 years, Ruth Ann Watson Shores, is an employee at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf. His daughter Sarah teaches in Ada where she graduated college.

Let’s quickly establish that Sulphur Police Chief David Shores isn’t going to ever win any intelligence awards and I will be frequently alluding to that point in this piece.
 

In fact, the Sulphur Police Department’s Facebook page has a photo of a fire truck and a banner showing a cartoon fire fighter cutting up sushi. That’s gotta be some of Shore’s handiwork.  

On August 18th, Chief Shores asserted to the press, “When you’re on Facebook people take things out of context, and that’s where we’re at.”

He continued, “This HateTracker bunch has (taken) things out of context and now they want to threaten people.”

Anyway, here are some examples of what Brainiac Shores thinks was taken out of context: 

· Kevin Bickerstaff posted, “Just tell the kids to kick ass in the bathroom and it won’t want to come back!”

· Seth Cooper posted, “Let Parker [son of Burney and Jaime Crenshaw] whip his ass until he quits coming to school.”

· Eddie Belcher posted, “If he wants to be a female make him a female. A good sharp knife will do the job really quick."   

· Truth isn’t truth. Taking a knife to a kid is not taking a knife to a kid. 

Okay, I just threw that last one in.

For most people, those posts are pretty cut and dry and the context is clear. For most people. The Sulphur police chief, however, appears to be exceedingly slow in getting things and looks to need extra time to work his deductive skills. This is Sheer Luck; not Sherlock.

As for Hate Trackers being behind the threats? Obviously, it wasn’t us. It took a real cop to figure out what Shores was incapable of deducing on his own.

Troopers with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, officers with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in California corrected Sulphur’s top cop and solved the case for his department by tracking down the caller making the threats and identifying him as a man named David LaHoda in California with absolutely no connection to Hate Trackers.
 

LaHoda confessed to making the threats after seeing posts on social media.
 

Yep, not only did Chief Shores get things wrong, he got EVERYTHING wrong. At least he’s consistent.  
 

It takes about half a minute to look at Caller ID and a minute to run the number through a database. That’s ninety seconds. With Chief Shores on the job it took four days and he had to go get help. It didn’t really require all those agencies to trace one phone number, but they rotated trying to explain things to Shores.
 

“Chief Shores, you look at the number. Now type that into the search database. No, no, don’t panic. I’ll go slower.”
 

Oh, but there are two dingleberries in this piece. Let’s not forget Tweedledee.
 

Identical stories quoting Chief Shore appeared in The Ada News and the Norman Transcript and claimed, “HateTracker [sic] is a web-based app maintained by SPLC that allows citizens to report hate crimes they experience or witness.”
 

Both stories were published under the byline Carl Lewis, Editor. Turns out, like the Bickerstaffs, Carl Lewis lives in Ada. Turns out, unlike Hate Trackers, the Bickerstaffs never appeared in Editor Carl’s coverage of the OSD threats.
 

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
 

While penning the story, Editor Carl violated numerous journalism standards by failing to check the information given to him and making sure what he threw in on his own was accurate. Yes, the editor of an Oklahoma newspaper flopped at exercising the most fundamental rules of journalism. Such rules are so basic they teach it in the first week of every high school newspaper class.   
 

Aside: Editor Carl, you didn’t even spell our name right. That’s literally the first thing you do, when writing a news story. You get the spelling of the names down. Not only that, but WRONG GROUP! That’s not even us.

Let us help you with this, Editor Carl: Hate Watch is a web-based app maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which allows citizens to report hate crimes they experience or witness.
 

That’s how it should’ve been written. Regardless, it has nothing to do with us as written and nowhere has the SLPC's Hate Watch ever been involved in this story anyway.

The SPLC has a hate tracker algorithm that monitors alt-right activity. It ranks activity.   

Our group, Hate Trackers, was around long before that  algorithm. We began monitoring activity a decade ago.  HT took an extended absences and returned to our mission last month with a more concentrated focus. 

At Hate Trackers our emphasis is on stopping domestic terror events and hate crimes before they occur. Plus, we have a Tip Line. It’s a phone number, not a web-based app.
 

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) maintains a section called Hate Watch. Trackers and Watch are two different words.
 

You readers know that, but I threw it in for T-Dum and T-Dee. They struggle so.
 

Further, the SPLC’s located in Montgomery, Alabama. We’re located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. To know that requires only a simple search or the viewing of one or the other’s websites. There’s even a tab on our menu bar that says Oklahoma.
 

You didn’t even go to the website, did you Editor Carl? You had one job.
 

I won’t even try to explain the geography to T-Dum and T-Dee.
 

Just a couple of suggestions: Don’t allow Police Chief Shores to try to think again, as that fails to help any issue and he likely needs to put the last of his oxygen-deprived brain cells into a witless protection program. Also, yeah, keep Editor Carl away from the keyboard or at least have him audit a basic news reporting course at Ada High School.  
 

While Chief Shores has been stumbling around trying to figure out Caller ID, what also passes for law enforcement in Southeastern Oklahoma has yet to file charges or make any arrests in the conspiracy to harm the twelve-year-old child targeted by numerous adults in the area. The sad thing is cops in nearby Bryan County had the evidence and the names of the suspects handed to them and still haven’t made a case out of it. That’s even more than the Caller ID that Shores had.
 

Perhaps a Los Angeles police officer can be brought in to show them how to do things. It worked for Chief Shores.

For those keeping score, this is the second attempt by backwoods southern cops to suppress our reporting on the horrendous treatment  of a child by what can only be described as walking garbage.   
 

Attention: T-Dum
David Shores, Chief of Police
600 West Broadway
Sulphur, Oklahoma 73086

 580-622-2372
580-622-2000, 580-622-6196

__________
 

Now, Shores, we want to reference this again, “This HateTracker bunch has (taken) things out of context and now they want to threaten people.”
 

That’s called libel. You falsely accused us of a crime and did so without any evidence and based solely on your malicious personal opinion in an attempt to publicly discredit Hate Trackers and bring economic harm to the value of our work. (Ask your city attorney why I used those particular phrases and words!)  
 

This means you and the City of Sulphur are getting your fannies sued and handed back to you for your gross mischaracterization of things.  
 

Oh, and every insult I lodged at you? Yeah, phrased perfectly, based on established incompetency, and directed at a public figure. I know the rules, you feckless gas bag. *wink* 

Published August 23, 2018

Achille, Oklahoma could be the setting for a bad 1970’s movie. It has the rural isolation perfect for a setting to where innocents are endangered, locals are afraid to talk publicly, and county bullies think they’re in control of a fiefdom.  
 

The town that boasts a population of under 500 resides in Bryan County in Southeastern Oklahoma. Its county seat is Durant and the population for the entire county just tops 40,000. During the Civil War, Gen. Albert Pike established Fort McCullough for the Confederate Army twenty-five miles north of what is now the town of Achille.

Bryan County is named after William Jennings Bryan, the son of a Jacksonian Democrat, from Illinois. He ran for president and was deeply involved in Democratic politics. Later in life, Jennings turned towards religion and creationism.

In 1925, Bryan battled famed attorney Clarence Darrow in what is known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. That trial concerned the teaching of evolution in schools. Bryan claimed Darrow and intellectuals were trying to destroy Biblical morals.

In popular culture, author L. Frank Baum based the character of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz on Bryan County's namesake.
 

Although located within the Chickasaw and Choctaw lands, Cherokees refugees located near the Confederate fort and named their camp Atsila, meaning fire. The name evolved into Achille.
 

The town is a known speed trap that garners 72% of its revenues from traffic tickets.
 

Farming and ranching are the historical economies of the county.

Southeastern Oklahoma is known as Little Dixie due to the settlement in the area of  Southerners who sought to escape their vanquished Confederacy. They brought their heritage with them. Their social, religious, and political beliefs are entrenched in the Deep South.

By 1900, 87 percent of white settlers in the Indian Territory (eastern Oklahoma) were southerners. Late-nineteenth-century immigrants from the Midwest perceived the southeastern part of present Oklahoma as a southern enclave and tended to settle elsewhere. Source
 

It’s a place where you don’t really want to stick out. Backwoods beliefs, tightly knit families, Southern Baptist churches, and extreme racism are in abundance.

Politically, Dixiecratss aligned with the Democratic Party ruled the area with great corruption. They've been slow to change over to the Republican Party officially, but they're getting there.

Typically, in these types of counties, the justice system is not so much about justice but about control and maintaining a white fundamentalist Christian mindset that doesn’t like any deviations from the norm. Everyone has their place. Everyone knows that. Don’t rock the boat.       

In these parts the Bible and preaching come with fear, ignorance, and bigotry. The people are unsophisticated and aren't pleased with anything they can't understand.
 

On August 10, 2018, we began vetting the people caught conspiring to hurt a twelve-year-old transgender girl in Achille. Nearly everyone involved in the hate crime were involved in the rodeo circuit and were members of ranching families – sometimes families that feuded with each other, made up, bred, and became kinfolk. They, also, seemed to follow the pattern of heavy drinking, beating their wives, and thumping the Bible.
 

Those families have long ties to Bryan County and the people in it, including the people at the courthouse and in the sheriff’s department.

Bryan County Sheriff Johnny Christian is a fourth generation resident that took office in January 2017.
 

That same day a protective order was filed against Burney Clyde Crenshaw by Brandy Kay Kleeman Rose. A search of Rose’s Facebook revealed to us a transgender daughter. The court document did not state a child’s name, which is customary on public records. Children are typically identified as minor child.
 

However, today, Maddie’s full name could be seen on the document.  
 

Someone at the Bryan County Courthouse went into their system and added Maddie’s full name, so that it could be publicly seen by any party searching the records. It’s customary that a child’s name is kept confidential. Why someone chose to alter the computer record to show Maddie’s full legal name is unknown.  
 

The day after Hate Trackers broke this story we received a message from someone claiming to be Lt. Watson with the Achille Police Department. It actually was inputted into our website messaging system as “Lieutantant Watson achille p.d..” [Note the misspelling of lieutenant.] With that was a message saying, “Do you individuals realize what you are doing? You are putting all parties involved at risk but most especially the child.for safteys sake remove that post.” [See Exhibit One]
 

It came from the email address Clwatson_watson@yahoo.com, which is a working account as we replied directly through an email account and the subject responded back from it.
 

In our entire history Hate Trackers has never been contacted by law enforcement and told to squash a story. It’s just not done. Any officer attempting to do that would be in direct violation of the First Amendment and acting against policy found within most departments. That made this reporter suspicious, especially with the misspelling of the “lieutantant” rank. However, the Achille Police Department is a two-man operation and isn’t exactly going to have a greatly trained force or ones educated enough to spell their polysyllabic job title.
 

A Linkedin page shows a Chris Watson working as a lieutenant for the Achille Police Department beginning in March 2017. [See Exhibit Two]  

Watson has been on the job for less than a year and a half. His employment prior to being hired as a police officer was as a delivery driver for Lowe’s in Sherman, Texas - a position he’d held for one year.
 

I responded to that message with more than a little curiosity and a decision to see what I could provoke from maybe/maybe not Lt. Watson, by replying, “We're not the ones threatening to harm a child. Made any arrests yet? No, you haven't.
 

Hate Trackers picked up the story and, as journalists do, we reported what was going on. We did our job. You didn't do yours. The story has nearly a hundred thousand views. It's getting attention from the national press. Had you been doing your job, it might not have gotten this far.
 

Now this is the part where I check you out. Why? Because you're using a yahoo.com address; not an official address. Also, because what I see is some human garbage that you're likely associates with that have threatened to harm a child and you're worried about their safety. If they didn't want to be exposed as to conspiring to commit a hate crime, then they shouldn't have done it. What other suspects do you ask the press not to report about?” [See Exhibit Three]      
 

“Watson” replied to us, “Seeking attention and releasing the name of the minor along with the photograph of the child is placing the child in danger.but keep talking tiger.” [See Exhibit Four]     
 

Funny thing is though at the time this exchange took place, Hate Trackers had not published the photo or given the name of any child.
 

The Achille Police Department will neither confirm nor deny that their officer tried to make the news media pull a story from circulation and doing so while writing like an eight-year-old child.  
 

The Bryan County Sheriff’s Department has had information on this crime for fourteen days now. No arrests have been made and no charges filed. They have the assistance of the FBI.
 

If we take Kevin Bickerstaff’s statement where he says, “Just tell the kids to kick ass in the bathroom and it won’t want to come back!!” [See Exhibit Five] you’ll see an evolution from just hate speech to actually conspiring to assault a child. It’s a crime.
 

Bryan County Sheriff Johnny Christian has the evidence right in front of him. Normally, one does their investigation and turns that and the name of the suspects over to the district attorney, who files charges and issues a warrant. It’s a small county and this is a pretty cut and dry case with no complicated investigation involved.   

When a threatening call from California was made to the Oklahoma School for the Deaf that centered around Lujaun Bickerstaff, a school nurse married to suspect Kevin Bickerstaff, Heaven and Earth was moved to get to the bottom of it and an out-of-state arrest was made four days later.
 

Four days later.  
 

Fourteen days later and no arrests or even charges filed to protect Maddie and her family.
 

Kevin Bickerstaff, a pilot for Frontier Airlines, was indefinitely suspended from his job pending an inquiry on the threat he made to a child. That company was able to act within a couple of days too. So, why isn’t the Bryan County Sheriff’s Department able to protect and seek justice for a transgender kid?
 

Because the Crenshaws and their kin in the Standifers are your friends, aren’t they Sheriff? They’re part of your good ol’ boy network.
 

This investigative journalist has been in many backwoods counties over the years. I know how things operate. My instinct is telling me that the sheriff’s department is protecting the criminal suspects. Maddie and her family will be off to Houston and Bryan County can get back to normal. Word gets around. People talk. People talk to Hate Trackers and they’re telling us that the overseers of Bryan County are ready to sweep this back under the rug, so they’re going to drag their feet until the threatened student moves. That way  they never have to do their duty and lock up their pals.    
 

This is what’s happening. This is why there has been no justice for Maddie.
 

And it’s not just at the courthouse either.
 

Achille Independent School District Superintendent Rick Beene has been great at telling news reporters “Achille Schools believes everyone should receive a safe education, and we have a very talented staff that cares very much about all of our students.”
 

However, that doesn’t appear to be his history or anything near the truth. Hate Trackers has talked to some of Beene’s former students, who claim the administrator is a huge homophobe that has a long history of making derogatory remarks against gays in front of students.

For instance, one source stated, "He stood out among all the teachers for being very anti-gay."

"… I remember thinking even at the time how hard it would have been to be gay in his class because he would go on tirades about homosexuality ALL THE TIME." [Emphasis theirs.]
 

Another student claims, “Rick Beene loves to preach not teach. He’s always trashing gays and using nasty slurs against them. He was obsessed with them. It’s like he’s trying to push his own manhood around the school.”
 

Beene and his wife Dana, who just so happens to be Maddie’s school principal at Achille, do not hide their Christian faith on the school’s official website.
 

Beene’s page mentions, "My hobbies include my family, the Bible, and sports."

Wife Dana Beene claims, "I gain my strength and confidence through my Christian faith. My time is spent with God, family, and work."
 

On Twitter, user @thursdaymorrow posted, “just received verbal death threats from 580 624 1144 after I had placed ONE call to achille school superintendent re: death threats to a trans student, how interesting.” [See Exhibit Six]       
 

A records search shows that phone number belonging to Burney Clyde Crenshaw. Either the Twitter user was lying or someone from the school called Burney.
 

Burney and Jaime Crenshaw, who began this hate crime, live in Colbert, OK. Their children should be attending that town’s school. However, the Crenshaws have their children attend the Achille schools. 

Published August 22, 2018

Grown men just can’t seem to stop bullying little kids, so Hate Trackers will keep identifying this subhuman garbage, in order that readers will know to avoid this filth.   
 

In an online conversation captured via screenshot, Ty Hays references the flack he’s been getting over  being exposed in a plot to harm a twelve-year-old trans child. His post says, “The transvestite community is coming after me and a few others for comments that were made on a friend of mine post. The trannys n faggots been posting on my FB last two days. It’s crazy.”
 

His friend David Williams replies, “Ty Hays you know we have open hunting seasons on them kind. Aint no bag limit in them either.”   
 

Obviously, the conversation alludes to the potential hate crimes committed on August 9th, by a group of adults currently being investigated by the Bryan County OK Sheriff’s Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in which Hays is a person of interest. The plot to have a child physically harmed and castrated has made international news and created a roar of outrage.
 

During the original incident, Hays commented about Maddie (see story), by stating, “This is terrible!! Y’all have great kids and a lil half baked maggot is causing them problems.”

Ty Andrew Hays: The Drunken Wife Beater

It would appear that Ty Hays is man enough to bully and slur a child, but not near man enough to take the heat for it. He also beats women. In the Burney Crenshaw tradition, Hays can go after women and children, but men not so much.
 

A court record entry from March 27, 2006 in Custer County where his now former wife had to secure a protective order against Hays. They’d been married less than a year before the criminal became a physical threat to his bride. The month following the issuance of the order, he was ordered to appear in domestic violence court, but failed to show up.  
 

Ty Andrew Hays, born December 2, 1975, was convicted on July 18, 20016 of committing assault and battery on a woman in front of a child in Custer County OK District Court. This was his ex-wife and an unknown child. Hays was sentenced to one year in the county jail with all but ten days suspended. The spousal abuser spent some time in an alcohol treatment facility for addiction issues, which the judge counted as time served. Hays was further ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
 

A native of Weatherford, OK, the former calf roper currently resides at 504 North Gray in McLean, Texas, which is in the eastern Texas Panhandle. He has a 2017 outstanding warrant in Blaine County OK for failure to have auto insurance.
 

He is married to Lacey Lee Caldwell Steel Hays, age 36.  
 

His cell phone number is 806-206-5440 and the Hays’ use a mailing address of P.O. Box 178; McLean, TX 79057.
   
In December 2017, the Hays’ purchased undeveloped land outside McLean that included just under 28 acres. County abstract shows that property to be at SEC 66 BLK 23 H&GNTR 16 27.75 ACSABST 1120.  
 

Hays is a former employee of the now defunct McLean Feedyard.
 

NEXT UP: DAVID WILLIAMS

David Anson “Slim” Williams, age 63

Divorced

Moore OK

From Seminole OK by way of San Bernardino, CA

 Published August 20, 2018
Maddie’s Photo Used by Permission

For original story click here.

Pause for a moment and imagine yourself a twelve-year-old girl that picks up your mom’s phone to take selfies and you discover images of adults calling you a maggot, a thing, an it, and then seeing them plot having you beaten up and castrated.
 

As Maddie saw the Facebook posts her lips trembled, tears poured from her eyes, and she immediately understood why her mother had been talking to her about being safe and taking extra precautions.
 

She ran into her mother’s arms.
 

The danger was back. The danger that threatened them just two years prior had found them again. An old nightmare joined with a new one.  
 

In 2016 Maddie’s family loaded their belongings up and moved to Achille, Oklahoma seeking safety for the transgender girl, who was being beaten up at school in Sherman, Texas. For a while, things were okay at the Achille Elementary School. She had friends and played like twelve-year-old girls were supposed to do. School staff allowed the new student to use their bathroom and there were no problems. Then the first day of seventh grade arrived on August 8th in a newly remodeled school, which was unfamiliar to Maddie. She had no ideal where the staff bathroom was, so she went into the girl’s bathroom.
 

Immediately, small-town gossip Jaime Crenshaw began wagging her poisonous tongue making false claims that the twelve-year-old transgender girl was looking over the top of the bathroom stalls to peek at little girls. Crenshaw began egging on her husband and others on an unsanctioned Achille School group page on Facebook.  The malicious gossip with her claws dug into the back of a child had found an audience to incite.
 

First, the group started the slurs: maggot, it, the thing. The verbal assault was to dehumanize Maddie. That was an important factor in leading to what would come next. Human beings are taught not to kill or harm, so you must mentally prepare yourself to see something as non-human so your conscious can accept harming and killing.
 

Now Maddie was no longer a human child in their eyes. They had dehumanized her, so they could hurt her. She was maggot, it, the thing. That brought them to the point where they could actually begin discussing how to hurt Maddie. The conversation changed to having other students consistently assault Maddie until she was too scared to come to school anymore. Then things got darker and one group member suggested getting a knife and castrating Maddie. They went from having their own children harm the girl to doing the harm themselves.
 

On August 10th, Maddie’s mother Brandy Rose was confronted and verbally harassed  in the Achille Elementary School parking lot by the frothing tongue wagger’s husband Burney Crenshaw – a coward of a man known to the courts for only assaulting and threatening women and children.

During the verbal attack on Brandy, the spineless punk Burney Crenshaw made vile and threatening remarks about preteen Maddie.  
 

Fearing for her family’s safety, Brandy filed a protective order against Burney Crenshaw in Bryan County District Court.
 

From that point screenshots had appeared of the threats on Facebook and Hate Trackers had obtained them. A young man named Cody Futrell had witnessed the bullies plotting to harm Maddie and took the screenshots that would set everything into motion.

By that night, we had vetted each person involved and published our story late Friday evening.   

The weekend would be a whirlwind as the social media posts went viral and our breaking story was being viewed by three hundred thousand people.
 

While Maddie slept between her parents too afraid someone would come into her own bedroom window and hurt her, an army quietly began building around the world to come to her aid.
 

That weekend saw law enforcement from the Bryan County Sheriff’s Department to the FBI launching investigations into the threats. The sheriff meant with school officials and determined that things were so serious that the Achille school district would have a complete shut down on Monday and Tuesday in order to protect students and staff. 

After Achille ISD superintendent Rick Beene meant with Brandy and Maddie school was reopened on Wednesday. However, an additional school resource officer had been hired and local police and deputies increased area patrols. 

Beene issued a statement saying, “Our school administration takes the safety of students seriously. Private discussions on social media does not represent our school and administration. Our school believes everyone should receive safe and free education.”

Kelly Payne created the hashtag #love4maddie that would become popular on  social media and used as this story's headline.
 

Sara Cunningham of Free Moms Hugs, a Norman, OK based nonprofit that consists of affirming parents providing love and acceptance to LGBTQ2’s, contacted the school system offering assistance.
 

Cunningham’s statement reads, “We are reaching out and expressing our concerns with the Achille School District. In light of recent events, we would like to offer our resources and connections with mental health professionals, to create a time for LGBTQ sensitivity training among your board, staff and/or student body. We have seen the posts involving parents from your school district; and are more than disheartened. But, we, in our experience, have seen that so much hate and abuse stems from fear and ignorance. The tragedy is, this level of emotional torture and threats of violence ( from adults ), will undoubtedly lead to depression, mental illness and the prompting of suicidal thoughts. We, at Free Mom Hugs, believe in complete, affirming love of our LGBTQ children. We have done the research, and are prepared for a healthy, productive discussion. And to bring education to bridge this disturbing gap. We desire to bring the most basic of human rights to this particular child, their family, and other students like them. It is proven that the more a person is educated to the culture and life of another person, the more successful they are in life. There is so much to understand about the transgender child; and once educated, the fear and anxiety dissolve. I would hope we could work together in bringing this education and training to your staff. And allow understanding to trickle down to the students and their families. We are not naive enough to believe we can change everyone; but with the right resources and options, we know we can begin the process of healing.”.
 

Darius Douglas, a member of the area LGBTQ2 community, began organizing a peaceful gathering at the school to show Maddie love and support.  A group of twenty sit outside the school grounds with their mouths taped shut and holding signs showing love and support for trans kids.  

Anne Babb in Oklahoma City began a GoFundMe account to help Maddie’s family be moved to safety. They had long wanted to move to Houston where Brandy’s oldest daughter lived and where there would be more medical and social support for Maddie. That fundraiser has seen a thousand people contributing a combined $25,000 to it.

The Grand Rapids Pride Youth Group began a card and letter writing campaign to send support to Maddie.  

State and national news outlets began picking up the story, which was a bit overwhelming for the small-town family. Mama Brandy suffers a social anxiety and it’s difficult for her to communicate with people, but she had a child to protect. So, Mama Bear wasn’t having it and began speaking up for her daughter on national news media.
 

The bullies that gathered to harm Maddie got their own attention.
 

When Frontier Airlines was contacted about their pilot Kevin Lee Bickerstaff trying to get Maddie physically harmed, they suspended him pending an internal investigation.
 

Bickerstaff’s wife, a pediatrics nurse at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf took heat too, as someone called in a threat to the school, which forced them to conduct their own closure.   
 

Maddie’s experience over the past several days has made her decide she wants to be an advocate for all trans kids out there. We can expect to see more on this courageous young lady.
 

This story sees only a chapter closing, but the lives of Maddie and her wonderful family go on, but this time with the knowledge they are not alone in their journey.