BOISE, Idaho — After May Pollard died on a late-January morning, a detective asked her parents a question: Had anyone wanted to hurt her?Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“A lot of America,” her mother answered.Less than an hour earlier, Elyse Thorpe had found her daughter’s body inside their home, called 911 and sobbed as she tried to revive her.May, an avid poet and gamer, had been struggling and increasingly withdrawn.Now, at 16, she was gone.
And the detective, from the Boise Police Department, wanted to know what Elyse meant.May’s father answered instead.“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” Joseph Pollard replied, voice rising.“The whole f-----g country.
The whole f-----g administration, every single f-----g day.”His raw fury came from the years of pain he and Elyse watched May endure since she came out as a transgender girl.She avoided eating or drinking at school for fear that she would need to go to the bathroom — and she panicked when she had to use the one for boys.
She talked of hurting herself if she couldn’t start taking estrogen.She hated how state laws highlighted the only way she was different when she longed to fit in.It was more than what any kid should have to go through."A lot of America" had wanted to hurt May Pollard, who died by suicide in January, her mother told police.Natalie Behring for NBC News“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse told NBC News.
“It got inside.”Suicide is complex.It stems from a combination of causes, such as mental health conditions, and cannot be attributed to any one factor.
But May’s life and death provide a glimpse into the tremendous and tragic effect that anti-trans laws and political rhetoric have had on trans people across America — especially kids.As May navigated the already overwhelming emotions most teenagers ...