Quote of note:

County attorneys asked a grand jury to indict Paul Rotondi and Frank Scarpinito not just with assault, but with violating the state hate crime act, which protects religious expression. On February 22, the grand jury did just that making this the first time the law has likely been used to protect a Satanist. The friends now face up to 15 years in jail.

Sympathy for the Devil
Daniel Romano was just an ordinary Satanist in Queens. One jagged scar later, he's a national test case for hate crime laws.
by Kristen Lombardi
March 15th, 2005 10:28 AM

If you saw Daniel Romano on the street today, you might think, hey, average young guy good-looking and a little stylish, maybe, but not remarkable. Yet this average young guy from Middle Village, Queens, has never been one for blending in, at least not before January 9, when he says two local teenagers got out of a car and beat him with a metal pipe and an ice scraper for being an avowed Satanist in an Italian Catholic neighborhood.

Gone are the blue hair and black nail polish, though he still wears a black fedora and an inverted crucifix. On a recent Tuesday, with his hair newly shaved, Romano, 20, blended in with the kids who waved and called out, "Hey, Danny!" at the corner of 72nd Street and 60th Avenue. That's where the incident Queens prosecutors are calling a hate crime took place.

Today, the only visible reminder of the alleged attack or, as the defense lawyers are arguing, a classic fight over a bad debt is the red scar behind Romano's left ear. Romano says he can't easily forget how the teens harassed and then jumped him. And he won't forget, he says, how they pummeled him so hard he needed 12 stitches to his head.