BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Sexual orientation and gender made up a combined 21.2% of the FBI's newly released hate crime stats for bias motivations. Sexual assault can be hate crime driven, which one Kentucky trauma center is trying to get out in front of. 

Director of Community Engagement Alayna Milby has been working with Hope Harbor for six years helping survivors emotionally and mentally. She said hate crimes can be acts of sexual violence. 

“That hate, that crime comes out as sexual violence," said Milby. "So that could be sexual harassment or could also be more extreme, like rape or sexual assault.”

A hate crime is commonly described as an act motivated by bias or prejudice, said Milby. Part of her job at Hope Harbor is to try and get in front of these crimes, which starts by educating the community. 

“The education that maybe is required to understand the differences in our community, the unknown," said Milby. "So I think the unknown can be a huge, big fuel to biases and stereotypes— things that are untrue and may feed into that hate.”

The FBI's numbers do break down by state, and for Kentucky, roughly 8% of recorded hate crimes were motivated by gender identity and sexual orientation in 2020. Milby said that that number could be even large if all cases went reported. 

“We're talking about violence against the LBGTQ community and the Black community and recognizing that folks in other communities are less likely to be believed or supported," said Milby. "These people experience sexual assault as a hate crime.”

Most people do not understand what a hate crime is, said Milby, but she has worked with survivors who have expressed they were the victim of one.