Downplaying a Teen’s Death, Chaiya Raichik Explains Her “Mission”
“Having a fight in school, it’s not breaking news, it’s not so outrageous,” said the embattled social media personality and member of the Oklahoma State Library Advisory Committee.
Nex Benedict, from the family’s gofundme
by Evan Urquhart
“The mission is to protect children and to expose the grooming and sexualization of kids,” explained Chaiya Raichik in a Spaces appearance on Twitter, hosted by conservative activist Josie Glabach, who goes by The Red Headed Libertarian.
This is the same mission that has been linked to more than twenty bomb threats across the country, according to reporting earlier this month by NBC. The documented threats have targeted people or institutions who’d become objects of Raichik’s outrage and derision: schools, libraries, hospitals, and individuals who Raichik spotlighted on her Libs of TikTok social media accounts.
In the past few days, Raichik’s mission has been under more scrutiny than ever after the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary Oklahoma teenager. Benedict’s grandmother and legal guardian told the Independent that the teen had endured over a year of bullying, culminating in a vicious beating in the Owasso High School girls’ bathroom.
In the Spaces appearance, Raichik appeared to be on the defensive. She called people who have connected the violent death of a queer teen to her campaign against safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth in public schools a slur for people with intellectual disabilities.
Raichik has repeatedly characterized those who create safe and welcoming spaces for queer youth in public schools as “groomers.”
“Oh they called in bomb threats, most of them didn’t even have a bomb. But this is a real world event, someone died, and they’re blaming it on me?” Raichik asked, rhetorically, addressing the coverage linking her posts to threats of violence as well as more recent questions that have speculated the hatred Raichik has stoked towards the LGBTQ+ community may have contributed to the environment of hostility at school faced by queer youth, including Benedict.
While Benedict’s cause of death has yet to be officially declared, news reports suggest the teen sustained one or more blows to the head during the beating by three older girls, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. Benedict was released from the hospital, but they collapsed suddenly the next morning. They were 16 years old.
But groomers didn’t beat a 16-year-old child’s head against the floor of the high school bathroom, school bullies did. And they did so in a state that has been more focused on investigating teachers for letting young readers know where they might access banned books dealing with race and gender than ensuring queer youth like Nex Benedict are safe from bullying.
In the appearance with Glabach, Raichik also speculated, with no apparent basis, that local police in Owasso, Oklahoma would withhold information about the incident.
Was the death of nonbinary 16-year-old Nex Benedict “an accident that got blown out of proportion?” Glabach asked Raichik in the interview. “Are they going to withhold pertinent information that doesn’t fit their narrative?”
“I do imagine that they will withhold information,” Raichik replied. “It happens all the time we’re pretty used to that.”
“Every single day there are fights in public schools. Having a fight in school, it’s not breaking news, it’s not so outrageous,” she continued.