10:15 PM CDT on Friday, July 7, 2006

By Vicente Arenas / 11 News

Entire exclusive interview with Galvans: Part 1 | Part 2

From very early on, the parents of a boy from Spring knew he’d be going places.

“This is when he was in kindergarten getting ready to graduate,” his mother said. “He was already telling everybody he was going to OU.”

KHOU

I remember not recognizing him," Mrs. Galvan said of her son in the days after the attack.

They never dreamed their little boy would beat the center of a hate crime debate.

“They did things to him saying, ‘you’re Mexican, we don’t like you, and you’re going to pay for it,” his mother said.

His father said they told him, “We’re going to torture you.”

“And that’s what they did,” his mother said.

It was at a home in Spring when investigators say David Henry Tuck and Keith Robert Turner stomped the 16-year-old’s head with books, yelled racial slurs and sodomized him with an umbrella pole.

“They also poured bleach all over his body in hopes of destroying any evidence left behind,” Harris County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Denholm said.

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You know the law has got to be changed ...," said Mr. Galvan.

The Hispanic teen was attacked after a Saturday night party where he reportedly kissed a 12-year-old girl.

Investigators described the assault as one of the worst they’d ever seen.

“I couldn’t believe – his face was severly swollen, blood was everywhere,” neighbor Nancy Benavides said.

“It was a shock,” Mrs. Galvan said. “I remember not recognizing him. I remember telling them we didn’t believe that was our son. We couldn’t recognize him.”
The Galvans -- who asked us to use only their last name -- and many others in the community called the attack a hate crime, but the District Attorney’s Office said it would instead charge the two white teenagers with aggravated sexual assault.

It’s one of the reasons the Galvans are speaking out.

“It bothers me now you know. It’s got to change,” Mr. Galvan said. “You know the law has got to be changed cause that’s not right.”

“Several things have to change,” family attorney Carlos Leon said.

Leon said the James Byrd Jr. hate crime law is painfully weak.

“It does not deter. It does not educate the public that these are bad types of crimes,” he asid. “A hate crime is a hate crime. It needs to be treated differently than your regular assault case.

“Why? Because we need to send a message to our community that you can’t go and attack individuals because of the color of their skin or the language that they are speaking or their place of origin or their sexual preference or whatever the case may be, there has to be a message that these are going to be treated differently,” Leon said.

Leon said Texas’ minimum sentences for hate crimes need to be enhanced.

“The message would be that we are going to treat it more seriously than your run of the mill fight between a couple of patrons at a bar because they didn’t like the parking space they had or whatever the case may be,” Leon said. “This has to be treated from a societal standpoint much more seriously.”

Leon said federal laws also need to be changed, because they don’t cover private residences, which is the reason the Department of Justice was not able to prosecute the case in Spring.

“I would like to get them both in one room and then see what happens,” the father said about facing the victims. “But I know that can’t happen. I just want justice served. They need to be punished for this, so they will not be out there to do this to anybody else.”

The teen has been in intensive care for more than two months now, and he doesn’t remember much.

“We did explain to him he was beaten pretty bad,” his mother said.

He cannot speak, so he uses a cell phone to send text messages.

“He wanted to know why they chose him, and I told him if it wasn’t him it probably would have been the next person,” his mom said.

The Galvans aren’t sure how much longer their son will have to stay in the hospital. At one point, they thought they’d lost him.

Now they’re just glad to have him.

It is KHOU'S Policy not to show the faces of juveniles who are the victim's of sexual assault. However, in this case, the parents and their attorney shared the photos with 11 News for use in the story.

The Galvans say they are extremely grateful for the support from friends and family. Many people, they say, have offered to help.

A fund to help pay medical expenses has been set up at Bank of America. The account number is 00586444494. You can make a donation through any of branch.