Former Top Chef contestant says she was viciously attacked for being gay

Gay former Top Chef contestant Josie Smith-Malave says she was attacked by a mob of bargoers screaming antigay slurs outside an establishment called Partners, nestled in the affluent seaside town of Sea Cliff, N.Y. Smith-Malave, 32, was a contestant on Bravo's Top Chef series last year.

Smith-Malave said she and a group of six friends had gone to Partners following a barbecue on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. She and another woman, Emily Durwood, 30, had been dancing together inside the bar and had eventually been asked to leave.

“We were close—I’m sure we didn’t look straight,” Smith-Malave told The Advocate. “My hand was on her hip, my arm around her shoulder—we definitely looked like lesbians.”

According to her account, when she, Durwood, and Smith-Malave’s sister, who is heterosexual, exited the establishment, they were met by a group of about 12 people, three of whom were women, who began to spit on them, punch them, and hurl epithets such as “fucking dyke” and “bush muncher.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before. They were jumping out of their skin screaming at us,” said Smith-Malave. “It was as if we had done something to their families.”

She said people inside the bar and employees of the bar did not try to break up the melee. “I was punched and kicked all over my body,” she said. “Everyone that was in the bar, bartenders, they all spilled out the door of the bar, and when I was able to look around, all of those people just watched this happen.”

After what Smith-Malave guessed was about 15 minutes, the group scattered, though she was not sure why. She speculated it was because an older couple who lived across the street had called the police. “They came out and they were like, ‘I can’t believe that happened. Things like that never happen here,'” said Smith-Malave. She could not identify them at the time of this interview.

When Nassau County police officers arrived at the scene, Smith-Malave said they took her account but made no arrests and did not offer medical treatment. Smith-Malave said she was left with bruises all over her body and a large bump on the back of her head—which has not gone down—and has suffered some hearing loss since the incident.

Smith-Malave could not give an exact age of the attackers, other than to say they looked young to her and the establishment seemed to cater to a young crowd. “I’m 32, and I refer to them as kids because they looked younger—they looked younger than my brother, who is 24.” She added that no one in her party was carded as they walked in the door.

Smith-Malave said the police gave no indication that they were going to investigate further or make any arrests. “I said to them, ‘What if this was your daughter or your sister or your wife? Wouldn’t you want to find these guys?’” said Smith-Malave. “It wasn’t until they found out my camera was missing that they started to look at this from a different perspective.” Smith-Malave’s mini camcorder, worth about $800, had been taken during the altercation.

After hearing nothing from the police for three days, Smith-Malave contacted attorney Yetta G. Kurland of Kurland, Bonica, and Associates.

Kurland has since contacted the sixth precinct of the Nassau County Police Department. “We have been in touch with local authorities, and while they acknowledged that the ball was dropped initially, we are hopefully awaiting arrests,” said Kurland, who held a press conference today to call on the police and the district attorney for a thorough investigation.

“This is an exclusive, upper-middle-class, mostly white neighborhood in Nassau County, and these individuals, if they committed gang assault, should be brought to justice,” Kurland told The Advocate. “Bias-related violence is bias-related violence no matter who does it.”

Detective Lt. Kevin Smith, spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department, said the sixth precinct is conducting a thorough investigation of the incident and treating it as a potential hate crime. Gang assault is a class C felony, which if prosecuted as a hate crime becomes a class B felony and could carry a sentence of anywhere from five to 25 years.

Kurland has not yet made plans to file a civil suit on behalf of her client. “We are just focused on making sure the criminal matter is handled properly,” she said. (Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate)

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