White House press sec says Biden wanted to ‘lift up’ LGBTQ bullying narrative after Oklahoma teen Nex Benedict’s suicide

In an interview with LGBTQ news outlet Washinton Blade, Jean-Pierre said that the White House sought to "lift up" the narrative around Benedict being bullied and focused on the fact that Oklahoma passed a transgender bathroom bill prior to the suicide. She did not mention of the abuse the teen had suffered at the hands of her father who went to prison for sexual abuse.

"It wasn’t just Nex Benedict. It was a story of many, many people in that community who were being bullied, who were being attacked. And we needed to speak to that," Jean-Pierre said in the interview.

“Nex Benedict and so many young people are dying by suicide,” she told the outlet. “And that hurts. That’s an incredibly hurtful thing. Because they were bullied, because they were attacked, because they don’t feel free.”

Initial commentary from outlets, activists, and pundits leaned into the narrative that Benedict had been beaten by other students and that this led directly to her death. It was later revealed that Benedict had instigated the fight with the other girls. Benedict committed suicide the next day, as was revealed by autopsy reports.

Later it was reported that Benedict's father had molested the teen for years and went to prison as a result. This was not mentioned by the Blade in the interview with the press secretary. James Everette Hughes, Bendict's father, was arrested in 2019 and charged with the rape of a minor under 14-years-old and then sentenced to 5 years in prison for sexual assault. He was let out just months before Benedict's suicide and was arrested again for not registering as a sex offender.

In the interview, Jean-Pierre spoke against laws that have been enacted by many states which prevent youth from getting sex-change procedures, “The president signed an executive order to make sure that we were lifting up LGBTQ+ rights on the federal level, to make sure that policies that we were putting out there were taking steps toward protecting families, protecting youth, addressing mental health amongst young people, and in the community, and that was something that was really important for the president to do," Jean-Pierre added in the interview.

The executive order that the Blade linked promoted "expanding access to gender-affirming care" in order to "establish an initiative to address the health disparities facing LGBTQI+ youth and adults."