Racist white woman and a mother Cheryl Hampton |
Illinois Attorney General files hate crime lawsuit against white woman Cheryl Hampton and her son Chad Hampton accused of harassing Black neighbor
Racist family built lynching mockup to intimidate Black neighbor:
By Edward Era Barbacena
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed the office's first-ever hate crime lawsuit on May 31 against two Carroll County white racist residents.
The lawsuit, filled in the 15th Judicial Court, is against two white Carroll County residents who allegedly spent months intimidating their neighbor, who is a Black man. The complaint alleges the two committed a hate crime by intimidation and disorderly conduct, and the lawsuit seeks civil penalties and equitable relief.
According to the lawsuit, Chad Hampton, 45, of Victoria, Illinois, and his mother, Cheryl Hampton, 67, of Streator, Illinois, allegedly engaged in months of racist behavior aimed at intimidating their neighbor, Gregory Johnson.
The defendants displayed the N-word in front of a Confederate flag in a window facing Johnson's home, and Chad Hampton had allegedly previously displayed swastikas in direct view of Johnson's home. Raoul said the harassment came to a head when the Hamptons used a noose to hang a bound and chained effigy of a Black man-made to resemble Johnson from a tree in direct view of his home.
“I looked out of my new home at a Black-faced mannequin shackled and lynched on a tree branch, the N-word scrawled upon a window, and swastikas,” Johnson said in a press release Wednesday. “Our American flag was replaced with their Confederate flag. Have we not come any farther than this? This lawsuit is about tearing off the shackles that still restrain us to this day. It’s about never giving up on the mission of our United States Constitution. We, as a nation, are better than this.”
The Carroll County State's Attorney's office has charged Chad Hampton with criminal destruction of property and Cheryl Hampton with criminal harassment of a witness.
Raoul filed the lawsuit following a hate crimes investigation by his office's Civil Rights Bureau with assistance from the Carroll County State's Attorney's office, the City of Savanna and the Savanna Police Department.
A 2018 amendment to the Illinois Hate Crimes Act allows for civil lawsuits to be filed against perpetrators of hate crimes. This is the first time Raoul has filed such a lawsuit.
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