The Anti-Trans Hate Crime That Wasn’t: Nex Benedict Was Abused — by Her Father, Not Transphobic Peers

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look back at the media’s failure to accurately cover the death of nonbinary-identifying teen Nex Benedict, refute a laughable New York Times essay on the political culture on college campuses, and cover more media misses.

Where’s the Media Mea Culpa on Nex Benedict?

The narrative that a 16-year-old nonbinary student’s death was the result of anti-LGBT bullying was too juicy a framing for much of the mainstream media to pass up.

However, now we know for certain that the facts of Dagny “Nex” Benedict’s life don’t conform to the progressive media narrative of bigoted teens and educators driving a trans kid to suicide. Instead, Benedict’s life — and its tragic conclusion — reflect a much deeper story about parental abuse and the psychological trauma and mental-health comorbidities that so often accompany gender confusion.

Benedict died on February 8, one day after a fight with classmates in the girls’ bathroom turned physical.

Now, after the release of Nex Benedict’s full autopsy report from the Oklahoma medical examiner on March 27, we know that Benedict’s death did not result from the alleged school attack by her peers. Instead, the death has been ruled a suicide, as there were “massive” amounts of Benadryl in the teen’s blood. Dr. Paul Wax, the Executive Director of the American College of Toxicology, told the local Fox affiliate she could have consumed 50 to 100 pills based on the toxicology report.

While Benedict did have an altercation in the girls’ bathroom of Oklahoma’s Owasso High School, it was not clear whether she was beaten because of her gender identity. And even preliminary autopsy results in February found that the teen “did not die as a result of trauma.”

Benedict told police three girls beat her after Benedict poured water on the girls for laughing at her and her friend. She claimed the girls had previously mocked her and her friends “because of the way that we dress.” Benedict’s grandmother Sue Benedict said Nex hit her head on the bathroom floor during the altercation.

Benedict can be seen on camera walking through the school’s hallways after the attack. The teen later went to the hospital and was discharged, before passing away the next day.

The medical examiner’s report indicates she suffered from “bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, self-harm (cutting), chronic tobacco abuse and chronic marijuana abuse.” Her bipolar-disorder medication, Fluoxetine, was also present in her system and may have contributed to her overdose death.

According to local police, notes left behind by Benedict “do not make any reference to the earlier fight or difficulties at school,” though “the parents indicated that Benedict reported being picked upon for various reasons while at school.”

However, court records obtained by Red State reveal the girl grew up with a troubled home life, having been repeatedly sexually abused by her father from the time she was nine to eleven years old. She told investigators her father anally raped her when she was nine years old and that he had molested her for years.

Benedict was adopted by her grandmother and moved from Arkansas to Oklahoma at some point after her father, James Everette Hughes, was prosecuted for the rape of a minor under 14. He pled guilty in November 2019 to felony sexual assault as part of the plea deal and received a five-year prison sentence. He was released in January, though it is not clear whether Benedict was aware of the release. Little Rock police arrested Hughes on January 25 for failing to comply with a requirement to report as a sex offender.

With all the available facts, many media outlets and politicians owe a public apology for their attempts to politicize the teen’s death.

In February, the New Republic blamed the death on GOP lawmakers: “Oklahoma Republicans Passed a Bathroom Bill. Now a Trans Kid Is Dead.”

Several Democrats ran with that version of events as well.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time, “Every young person deserves to feel safe and supported at school. Our hearts are with Nex Benedict’s family, their friends, and their entire school community in the wake of this horrific tragedy.”

“The killing of Nex Benedict is gut-wrenching and underscores the danger of extremists who are dehumanizing kids with anti-trans hate in Oklahoma and across the country. Every student should feel safe at school and supported for who they are. Nex deserves justice,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) wrote in a post on X.

California state senator Scott Wiener chimed in: “Nex Benedict, a non-binary kid, is dead after being bullied and attacked in a school restroom. The anti-trans laws sweeping the country – including aggressive gender policing in restrooms – have real-world, deadly consequences.”

Meanwhile, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shared a post from the Advocate with the headline, “Oklahoma transgender student dies after allegedly assaulted by students at school.”

“Nex Benedict’s death from a brutal assault in their high school bathroom is outrageous and heartbreaking. The anti-trans fervor fueled by extreme Republicans across the country is having deadly consequences for our children. We must stand up against anti-trans hate,” Pelosi wrote.

GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis demanded that “leaders and extremists” be “held responsible for failing to keep Nex safe.”

One of at least seven stories the New York Times covering Benedict’s death between February 21 and March 1 was headlined, “Anti-Trans Policies Draw Scrutiny After 16-Year-Old’s Death in Oklahoma.” And an article in the Times’ Learning Network vertical, which aims to provide classroom resources for teachers, offered prompts for high-school students to reflect on Benedict’s death, including, “Do you think that when leaders or influential figures publicly dehumanize or demonize people in marginalized groups, it can inspire others to do the same?”

The Human Rights Campaign filed a complaint with the Biden administration over Benedict’s death, prompting the U.S. Department of Education to open a federal investigation into whether Benedict’s school violated Title IX by failing to respond to “alleged harassment.”

Even after the release of Benedict’s autopsy results, which found she had died by suicide, President Biden still could not let go of the prevailing political narrative.

“Nonbinary and transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know. But nobody should have to be brave just to be themselves. In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children,” Biden said in a statement.

Just this past Saturday, First Lady Jill Biden told attendees at an HRC dinner, “Laws and attitudes can lead to devastating consequences — harm that can’t be undone, that leaves parents torn by grief. Parents and grandparents like Sue Benedict — may Nex rest in peace — and the countless others who have lost LGBTQ children to suicide, bullying, and hate.”

Headline Fail of the Week

The New York Times opinion section brought us yet another outrageous take last week: “What College Applicants Really Think About Republicans’ Campus Panic”

The answer? College students “are remarkably progressive, fair-minded and unafraid of intellectual challenge. If only our politics lived up to their values,” according to columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom.

A look at the events of the last few months seems to indicate otherwise.

And yet, the columnist writes that the “moral panic about ‘woke’ campuses has metastasized into actual legislation,” criticizing Republican efforts to tamp down on so-called diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public colleges.

She claims bills in Alabama and Florida to combat DEI in schools are “all-out attacks on learning by excommunicating liberal ideas from the classroom.”

“Without university leaders, politicians or voters mounting a defense of faculty governance and democratic speech, anti-woke reactionaries can remake college into the very thing they claim it is: cloistered institutions that cannot respond to what their students want and need,” she writes.

Media Misses

• CNN’s Kaitlan Collins doubled down on her claims that chemical abortion drugs are safe, after ADF’s Kristen Waggoner refuted her claims on air, saying, “What the FDA’s own statistics and documents say is that up to 7 percent of women are going to have surgical complications.” Collins responded to a clip of the interaction on X claiming that mifepristone is “highly safe and effective,” and that the drug’s safety is “on par with those of common over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, studies show.” Yet as my former NR colleague John McCormack notes, “1-in-300 people taking Advil or Tylenol do not end up experiencing ‘major adverse events’ like serious hemorrhage ‘hospitalization or a significant infection.’”
• White House correspondents are reportedly committing petty theft on Air Force One at such a rapid clip that White House Correspondents’ Association president and NBC correspondent Kelly O’Donnell emailed members of the press corps telling them to stop, according to a new Politico report. Reporters are frequently taking items from the plane as souvenirs. Journalists have taken everything from “engraved whiskey tumblers to wine glasses to pretty much anything with the Air Force One insignia on it. . . .”
• 60 Minutes learned that sometimes you really do need that Oxford comma:

See more

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether social media platforms have the right to decide what users can say on their sites. Tonight, Lesley Stahl speaks with: Rep. Jim Jordan, a misinformation researcher and a former Facebook executive. https://t.co/mEN4CWeXMW pic.twitter.com/sNsB9zK58q

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 24, 2024