Hate crime reports have soared in D.C. Prosecutions have plummeted.

Ashly Taylor was shot for being a lesbian. Then she watched as the hatred that fueled the attack was ignored in court.

HYATTSVILLE, MD – MARCH 22: Ashly Taylor shows her scars while photographed at her home in Hyattsville, MD, March 24, 2019. Taylor was shot in the chest while on a construction site in Feb. 2018 by a male co-worker who didn’t like that she is a lesbian. Her attacker, Enjoli Gaffney, was recently given 36 months in prison, a short sentence that angers Taylor and her girlfriend. (Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post)

The hatred that day couldn’t have been clearer to Ashly Taylor.

She had endured it ever since coming out as a teenager, when strangers said lewd things to her for holding another girl’s hand and one of her own relatives called her a “dyke.” Yet the 27-year-old had never encountered a problem on the construction sites she’d worked since high school, where she was just another laborer in baggy clothes and a hard hat, until a chilly February afternoon in 2018.

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