Support for Rhema and Tia

Hi there! We wanted to start by thanking you for your energy, care, and support! We also wanted to provide a content warning! This is an intense story/experience that is still ongoing with violence, physical and verbal threats, and hate crimes. Please take care; this is why we are reaching out for much needed support!

Our dear friends and badass lesbian babes, Rhema and Tia are going through it with their neighbor. This is not a simple neighborly squabble; it is violence coming from someone who is both mentally unstable, and is actively medicating their vulnerable mental health with hard drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. Asking for help is very hard for this family to do, but as this unfolds, it has drained the family funds, and also caused the family members to miss many days of work. The pain and suffering inflicted on these two lesbian women is crippling.

Rhema had never spoken to this neighbor prior to the events that are taking place currently, and Tia only had two occurrences with him. It began in December 2023, Tia was taking the family dog, Björn, on a walk. As they reached their home parking lot, this neighbor (we have found out that his name is Donald J. Thompson) ran at her, screaming that her dog was, “a demon! A Devil of Lucifer!” And that if Tia wasn’t going to kill him, he would be happy to. The second occurrence, in the same month, Donald was in front of the apartment garbage cans, and made a romantic advance on Tia. Tia replied that she was a lesbian, and that she was married.

Since then he has been fixated on the family, and would hang around the apartment. Watching. It has now amplified and turned really really scary for these two.

Weeks ago they had their tires slashed on two occasions. Other issues with the car had also appeared at random. Weird piles of rocks were found on their porch, and also a strange footprint was left on the porch (1/6).

On January 25th, (the day before Tia’s birthday) Rhema’s (also gay) friend and coworker (whom we will call J) arrived to grab Rhema for carpool, but was a little early so parked in Rhema and Tia’s parking spot facing the front of the house. Donald popped out of a tool shed (that belongs to another neighbor), and after menacingly staring at J for a while, ran to the car and started wildly blathering unintelligibly through the window. J rolled down the window, and Donald yelled, “What are you doing here?!” J replied, “Oh, I am picking up my coworker for a shift.” Donald then pointed at Rhema and Tia’s apartment, and asked, “Oh. The LESBIANS?!” J replied, “If you wanna’ put it that way.” Donald then said, “Oh! THE LESBIANS! I have been planning on killing them for a while! I am going to put them under the house when they are dead!” He kept repeating the “I am going to kill the lesbians” along with more garbled speech until another neighbor of the four-plex came out and yelled, “Donald, I am about to call your social worker! You need to stop this right now!” Donald then said, “Fine, I am going to stab you too!” and continued to harass J, and the neighbor with a mix of unintelligible ranting, and homophobic jargon. The harassment came to a head, when J repeatedly texted Rhema to hurry or they would have to leave because they were threatened and scared. Some of J’s texts were: “Crazy homophobic dude out here” “please hurry” and “I might have to leave” “I might leave”.

By now, Rhema’s usually quiet dog began barking wildly and baring his teeth out the window. Rhema heard it, checked her phone, and ran out the door to J in her pajamas. As she was walking out the door, Donald looked at her and said, “KILL YOU, KILL YOU! I’M GONNA KILL YOU LESBIANS AND BURY YOU UNDER THE HOUSE”. Rhema and J pulled out and went to work. Rhema called Tia’s work, and Tia had to bring Rhema work clothing from the car so that Rhema could get presentable for her shift.

During Tia’s lunch break that day, she came home to make sure the pets were okay. Donald was in front of the house still fighting with the neighbor. When Tia got out of the car, Donald threatened to kill her, and said that he planned to slit her and Rhema’s throats and kill the neighbor.

Tia called the police, who came out to talk to her. On the way to their work event, Rhema and J were called by the police to make a statement. It was this time that Rhema found out that Tia was also harassed. When the police were talking to Tia, several officers stated that they knew this guy, and how he already had multiple offenses (including prior assaults) around Olympia. They failed in finding him, and Donald was now a fugitive. Olympia PD told both Rhema and Tia that they needed to be very careful, and if they saw Donald that he would be arrested on the spot on felony harassment/death threat, and felony hate crimes.

Rhema and Tia had to live in crippling fear of the missing fugitive until the subsequent events took place. The only birthday event Tia did was take the dogs to a local park for a walk, so that they could all destress. They both had breakdowns on this occasion, because going home would be a terror. It is here I should mention that they both have a lot of pets to care for, and letting the dogs at night while Donald was at large was especially scary. Rhema and Tia would have to walk outside with a headlamp, a lantern, and a screwdriver or hammer in their pocket for protection.

On Saturday the 27th, Rhema and Tia had gone to a day lunch to attempt to end the weekend on a better note. Upon arriving at their home past dark, Donald was waiting in the literal shadows. When they pulled in, he jumped out, waving a heavy flashlight wildly screaming at the two. He also wielded an unidentifiable heavy object that he began slamming on the front hood of the car.

Tia was frozen in fear and this continued until she snapped out of it, and backed out aggressively as Donald followed them banging the object on the car. Tia is not a good driver (Rhema wrote this part, so it is okay), and was having a hard time with the three point turn about to get back on the long driveway. Donald was still slamming the car threateningly the entire time.

They finally got out (but had to be slow because of the damaged tires). Donald followed them on a bike out of the driveway, and for blocks they saw his flashlight being waved as he tried to find them. Tia had to call the cops three times to get officers to arrive, as they were still being chased. They would move block by block away but he was still coming, even though the cops wanted them to remain close.

When the police arrived, they arrived with seven cars. He was immediately arrested under the charges listed above.

After the he was put in the car and driven away, one of the police cars pulled over next to Tia’s car and told them that Donald was going to be in jail for at least the weekend (it was Saturday night, which led to fear of him being released on that Monday), and that someone would contact them to follow up. The police never took a statement from Rhema and Tia for the night of the arrest, even though they said they would.

It is very apparent that Donald is homophobic and his violence towards the two stems from religion based homophobia alongside other things.

Donald awaited court, and then was held in jail until arraignment and sentencing. His bail is set at $15,000 and is bondable on Monday, February 29th. As of Friday, February 2nd, Thompson was arraigned and sentenced on a felony harassment charge. Rhema and Tia are concerned that the hate crime charge may now have been dropped, along with the threat to kill part of the charge.

At the time of first court, the judge did not award a protection order, so the next day Tia applied and received a two week protection order. As of the most recent sentencing, the court did put in for a protection order as well (this is to our knowledge). This would help in court/ if he gets out and continues his violent actions/attempts/words. From Rhema, “If he gets out of jail and is now angry, and comes for us, in the words of JLo in the film Enough, ‘what am I supposed to do with it?! Throw it at him?!”

Alongside all of this, his two buddies, also vagrants (one with a sex offense charge we have come to find out, and one being the guy that broke into/attempted to rob Rhema and Tia’s yard in early January ((there is another police report for that))), still live at the property. On the night of the arrests, one of them came near the womens’ back window and yelled "YOU FEELING SAFE, FUCKERS?!". No- one can be evicted EXCEPT this one neighbor because of the incident. (Their landlord made Rhema and Tia jump through absolute hoops to make this happen. Their landlord is enrolled in programs to give folks second chance housing, and he gets paid for it. Rhema and Tia were never told that when they moved into the property. (The two have absolute compassion for houseless folks, folks with mental illnesses, or anyone really. They keep to themselves, and only escalate when things become violent or life threatening).

From Rhema “This guy has worked the system before. His own social worker, who Tia has talked to says that he is an extreme drug abuser, and has regularly used his addictions/ mental illnesses to get out of his law troubles. As said prior, Donald has priors including more than one assault. Usually he can get sentenced to mental health or rehab centers, gets free, and then repeats his criminal processes. I fear that he will be sentenced ( –to what I cannot say– I assume it will be to rehab or some slap on the wrist sentence at a mental health facility) What we wanted did happen...he is at least being held somewhere for an undisclosed time. We have to get out of this place in that time. We are afraid to leave the house from the trauma and from the threats of the two other neighbors.”

Rhema’s family is dealing with her dad’s amputation infection in the bone, and her mom’s knee replacement. This meant that Rhema had to leave Tia in Olympia, and take care of her sick family in Shoreline. Rhema is happy at least, that Donald was locked up during this time.

Tia and Rhema are working hard on finding safety and security in all of this but have limited resources. They want desperately to move from their rental, and get away from the continuous dangers they have faced there for the last three years. Rhema and Tia are unable to make a 3x rent on an application, nor do they have a cosigner. Rhema says that they both are extremely overworked. They take on extra shifts and jobs (Tia is working a fulltime job and a weekend job. Rhema is working fulltime and taking on extra work from other departments). whenever they can, but don’t make a living wage in this society. They have many bills unpaid, and every month is a paycheck to paycheck struggle. It would take an incredible amount of support and the right space since they have many many adopted animal friends living with them.

From Rhema “There is no safety where we live, and we are alone there. It is really unfortunate. We feel like we are being circled by sharks.”

“We are two unarmed lesbian women keeping to ourselves. We don’t bother or really even talk to our neighbors because we are always working, but even in the rare moments where we see them we are always kind to them!”

It's really fucked how our system doesn't protect people. These are two ladies working as educators as well! Rhema is a Mestiza working in marine ecology as an environmental educator. Tia is a butch/dyke who works as a teacher for preK, and also is a docent at an aquarium on the weekends. Educators have historically been paid low wages, especially female STEM educators. There are no easy ways out of this scenario and these two need your support in any way!

Money raised would be going to increasing security measures (cameras, motion sensors, alarms), protective measures, mental, physical, spiritual health support, animal care, ++++ and maybe a small birthday redo for Tia!! MOST IMPORTANTLY, a savings account to get these two out of this threatening situation! These two have had to take MULTIPLE days off to deal with this chaos, and have had to pay in to receive legal counsel, for the repairing of the car THREE times due to the three neighbors harassing them, and more.

We are also looking to the closer (local) community for assistance with an emergency response team to have on call in case the neighbor gets out, or his buddies act out et cetera.

Thank you for any and all support, they are feeling exhausted but are feeling much love from the community already, which really shows in times like these!

Venmo: @Rhema-Neas-Gass

Paypal : @RhemaNeas