Add to this picture the student life experience of an LGBT child. In one study, more than half of LGBT students who are African American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander and multiracial said they had been verbally harassed at school in the past year. Another reports nearly half (48 percent) of LGBT students of color experienced verbal harassment from both their sexual orientation and race or ethnicity, and 15 percent had been physically harassed or assaulted. The physical, emotional, and mental health impacts of a hostile climate at school easily encourage avoidance behavior, and students often skip class or stay home. This has deleterious effects on their school performance and college entrance prospects. Serious long term effects of harassment at school emerged in one study: 32 percent of transgender people who were physically assaulted at school reported a history of work in the underground economy, including drug dealing and sex work, compared with 14 percent who had not experienced violence at school. In a different survey, a staggering 51 percent of LGBT people who reported being harassed or bullied at school also said they had attempted suicide.

Overstretched staff at under-funded schools rarely can devote much time and attention to LGBT students’ concerns and may have no training whatsoever to address victims’ needs. This may be why fewer than half of LGBT students of color tell a teacher or staff member about harassment they experience at school, the report notes, out of fear that it could make the problem worse or that nothing will be done. Lack of support at school is often accompanied by lack of support in the family. The LGBT children report that in addition to harassment at school, their top concern is disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity to non-accepting families. And they are right to be scared. In what is probably the most shocking statistic of the report, one study found that 20 to 40 percent of the homeless youth in the U.S. identify as LGBT or believe they may be LGBT. About five percent of youth in the general population identify as LGBT. This homelessness is attributed to family rejection of the LGBT children who have been forced out by their parents. “Among the consequences of homelessness for these children is difficulty completing school,” the authors note dryly. Only one out of three shelters in the U.S. offers GED programs. Shelters remain a problematic substitute for a family home for children, anyway, especially transgender youth whose gender identity does not match the sex categories used by the homeless shelters. Where do they end up? A Broken Promise does not say, but notes they “face substantial challenges such as increased substance use and increased interactions with law enforcement, which later make it more difficult to enter the mainstream labor force.”