A young Native American man from Navajo, N.M., tells the Navajo Times’ Jan-Mikael Patterson, here, that three men accused of attacking him and branding him with a swastika treated him “like a goat getting branded.”

The victim, who is 22 but who functions at the mental level of a 12-year-old, was branded wire clothes hanger. A swastika was shaved into his hair, and white supremacist symbols and slogans also were drawn on his body, prosecutors say.

The incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime.

Three men have been charged in the late April attack. (See previous post, here.)

“I didn’t want them to do this to me,” the victim tells Patterson. “I’m ashamed of what they did. They treated me like an animal, like a goat getting branded. I’m not a goat. I’m not a Jew.”

As Patterson reported last week:

The three arrested include two Anglos, Jesse A. Sanford, 24, Paul W. Beebe, 26, both of Farmington, and William Hatch, 28, of Fruitland, N.M., whose mother is reportedly Navajo.

“To my understanding, William Hatch is of mixed race but I don’t know specifically,” said Sgt. Robert Perez of the Farmington Police Department. “I was told that he is part Native American but I don’t know the specific tribe.”

The victim said he was conscious throughout the attack.

There’s so much that’s sad about this, but perhaps the saddest is that the victim says he feels ashamed. He’s not the one who should feel shame.

Gwen Florio

Tags: branding, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, hate crimes, Navajo, racism, white supremacist