Leno Bernard Smith Jr. Memorial Fund

Content Warning: literally every evil thing that slithered out of Pandora's Box. I am not exaggerating when I say that my telling my father about my traumas made him experience a psychotic break in the clinical and Lovecraftian sense.

Hi y'all. My name is Leno Bernard Smith Jr. You may address me by any pronouns so long as you pronounce my name right (lee-no, ya really gotta let the le breathe). I am biracial (Black/white). I am 25 years old. I am a Ph.D. student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department of the University of Minnesota. However, I am currently on medical leave from the program to recover from a traumatic brain injury I sustained on February 12th, 2021 (Lunar New Year). The TBI is awful, but that is not why I am making a GoFundMe. I am here, hat in hand, to ask for money because on February 15th, 2022, my roommates unlawfully evicted me and my parents conspired to get the Minneapolis Police Department to murder me. So why would they do this, you ask? All because I will denounce the people who raped me publicly, and they tried to impoverish and kill me so that I would not bring my story forward.

Let's backtrack. On February 11th, 2022, I learned that one of the people who sexually assaulted me over the course of 7 months of our relationship was spreading rumors about me. This vile person is a woman, and as a Black man, disgusting & false rumors can get you killed. Prior to hearing about the rumors, I resolved to live my best life as a survivor of sexual assault--the best revenge is living well, after all. But these rumors needed to be dismissed. More than that, every Black man that interacts with this individual needs to know that she cannot be trusted. So, I decided I would come forward with my story and publicly denounce the people who raped me. Not just for me but for every Black man lynched because someone spread false rumors about them. Coming forward was the only way to remove the target from my back.

I told my parents about my sexual traumas during the afternoon/evening of February 11th. While at first I thought they understood me, they instead very thoroughly misunderstood me. They interpreted my joy at finally getting to show my true self--a survivor--to them as mania. As a result, over the weekend of February 11-13th, my parents conspired to commit me to a mental institution involuntarily. They knew how to do this because my parents worked on a Navy psych ward in the 90s.

For the record, I do not have Bipolar disorder. I see a Black trauma psychologist nearly every week and a psychiatrist every 6-8 weeks. I have Insomnia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depression, and Post-Concussion Syndrome. I have experienced one episode that was kinda like hypomania in Spring 2019 during a stressful period of my Ph.D., but I have not experienced anything like that since. I take a few prescriptions for my anxiety and my Insomnia. While I am mentally ill, I do not have Bipolar I or Bipolar II. My parents knew I saw a psychologist. They knew I was treating my mental illnesses. But they thought they knew better than I or my psychologist/psychiatrist did about my mental health.

On Monday, February 14th, I told my roommates (both women, one white and one Black) that I would be going public with my trauma. I told them I would be going public out of concern for their safety. The people that abused me are vile cowards, and I didn't want them to get caught in the crossfire if I faced retaliation. I'm not afraid of retaliation, mind you: I duck death like Neo ducks bullets, and I'll never be scared of anyone who grew up playing Duck, Duck, Grey Duck. But you never know. I told them I would go public on Friday, February 15. I offered to reach out to community watch groups so that someone would keep an eye on our apartment at all times. I offered to pay them out the rest of the lease. I offered to put them in an AirBnB temporarily. They chose none of these options. Instead, as I arrived to the MSP airport on the early afternoon of Tuesday, February 15th to pick up my father for an impromptu visit, they told me via text that they wanted me to leave the apartment and stay with my dad for a few days. They didn't say they would pay out the rest of my lease. Instead, they very politely told me that they refused to cohabitate any longer with a two-time rape survivor.

My dad and I moved half of my possessions--all the necessary things like my clothes, laptop, passport, table-top roleplaying dice--to an Airbnb above Tilt pinball in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. During the process of this moving into the Airbnb, my dad disappeared for ~15 minutes, and I had to wait outside in the cold. I would later realize that he was calling community health care workers to come to the Airbnb and screen me for Bipolar disorder without my consent. At approximately 6 pm that evening, I was chatting with my dad on the couch in a cozy 3rd floor AirBnB. I had just finished telling him that even though he failed to protect me from trauma and inflicted so much trauma upon me (emotional only) growing up, I still loved him deeply. I told him that I would use the platform I would gain by coming forward to enable other survivors, anonymously or otherwise, to tell their stories and shame their abusers. As I finished telling him all that, someone knocked on the door. My dad sprang up while I sat on the couch, very confused. He let in two lovely Black community healthcare workers. I greeted them kindly while telling my father that he broke my trust by calling community healthcare workers on me.

I'm an intelligent person. I knew that my father told the community healthcare workers lies. I knew that if I refused to speak with them, my refusal would be used as evidence of my supposed "mania". So I sat and chatted with them. I told them that while I was happy to speak with them, my father invited them without my consent, which was very upsetting. I told them I appreciated what they did, even if their role as a tool of the state was used in an attempt to suck the last little bit of autonomy from the marrow of my bones after my rapists devoured my body and my former roommates had their fill of my carcass. We spoke for ~45 minutes, and once they were finished with their questions, I put my shoes on and called a friend that lived nearby. I then began raging at my father. I told him that if he wanted to start rebuilding the trust between us that he had shattered, he needed to give me the keys to my car. He refused. He then tried to get the mental health workers to restrain me. They refused. I told my friend to come pick me up. She began driving my way. I told my father that when you call emergency services in some cities because of a supposed mental health episode, cops show up and they murder people. My father yelled that if I left the Airbnb, he would call the cops.

Time slowed. I saw my face on a T-Shirt. Fight or flight. I didn't know a way out of the apartment complex the AirBnB was situated in, but I knew that if I could get out of it fast enough, I could hide somewhere in the city until my friend could pick me up. On my person, I had my winter boots, thermal socks, American Eagle (AE) athletic fit dark jeans, AE boxer briefs, an iPhone X, a wallet, two Bic Atlantis pens, a computer mouse, a tripod Bluetooth remote, a long-sleeve thermal shirt, a tarnished gold chain--Figaro style--that my dad gave to me when I became a man (Xmas 2008), and a gold ring I got in September 2021 that spells, "NO." I full-tilt sprinted for my life out of the AirBnB, down a hallway, down two flights of stairs, and into the MCAD parking lot. I began my new life there, sitting on frigid cement steps.

I have spent the last ten days recovering from that incident. I've been alternating between crashing with friends and staying in an Airbnb. I voluntarily spent one full day in the EmPATH unit in Fairview Edina to prove that I am not manic. I am reaching out to y'all because I need money. I have to restart my life from scratch. I don't know where my dad put my essential possessions or car. He and my mom won't even apologize for almost getting me killed. I have ~$1000 to my name, and that's after burning through ~$4000 in savings and ~$3000 in donations from friends and loved ones on essentials like clothes, food, and a laptop. I have a job lined up that starts in early March but I don't know if I can go to it anymore because I don't trust that my dad wouldn't call the place where I'd be working and say that I am a threat to the safety of myself and others.

I hate asking for help. But I really, really need help. I set the goal for this GoFundMe at $26,000 because that's approximately the gross pay for a graduate research assistant in my program. Donate the amount that you would have donated to my funeral expenses if I had died in that Airbnb 10 days ago. Any excess funds will be sent to Black individuals going through crises in the Twin Cities.

Even after all of that trauma and pain, I am still coming forward. I cannot be silenced. I cannot be bought. I cannot be threatened.

To the woman who abused me for 7 months, I have one question I would like you to ponder: do you feel like an abuser yet?

I eagerly await your response.

All the best,

Leno