The Deception of Nex Benedict: Media Misinformation Blaming America

More information has been revealed on the death of Nex Benedict, the 16-year-old girl whose death was exploited by the media to pretend anti-trans bigotry led to her death.

Originally, the media suggested she was gender non-binary. They claimed she was abused by other students at her high school, beaten up in a bathroom, and then died due to injuries from the fight.

It turns out, not one element of that was true. It turns out, Benedict started the fight in the bathroom. It turns out, Benedict had returned to her normal state of health after that fight.

And it turns out, Benedict committed suicide. So every major element of the mainstream media’s report was false.

New details have now come to light about the life of Nex Benedict, which demonstrate as per usual, when young people commit suicide, it is not because society is mean to them due to their gender non-binary status; it is largely because there are extreme mental health co-morbidities with that identification.

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That is particularly true in this case — a tragic, horrifying case. As RedState reported:

Now that we have the full autopsy report for Dagney (Nex) Benedict, many of the questions surrounding her overdose have been answered. The full report, released by the Chief Medical Officer and Board of Medicolegal Investigations on March 27th, 2024, confirms what the earlier Medical Examiner’s Office reported on March 13th, 2024. There were “massive” amounts of Diphenhydramine, more commonly known over the counter as Benadryl,” in Dagney’s blood.

Dr. Paul Wax, the Executive Director of the American College of Toxicology, reviewed the results and confirmed she could have consumed 50 to 100 pills to reach that toxicity level. Her routine medication, fluoxetine, for bipolar disorder was present and may have contributed, a second authority concluded. Her death was intentionally self-inflicted.

The report indicated, “The 11 pages released indicate handwritten notes ‘suggestive of self-harm’ were found in Nex’s room by family members, and that the teen has a history of ‘bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, self-harm (cutting).’

While advocacy groups remain insistent that her distress sourced from bullying at school, Dagney did not indicate this in her last notes. The Owasso Police Department released a statement saying, “Although the notes do not make any reference to the earlier fight or difficulties at school, the parents indicated that Benedict reported being picked upon for various reasons while at school.”

As is usual in these cases, there is much more to the story. A hint was provided by the Washington Post on February 21st, 2024, that never made it beyond that report. Describing Dagney’s funeral, the article states that Dagney’s cousin spoke “along with her mother and Benedict. Nex’s biological mother was among the mourners; their father, who is in prison for abuse, was not.”

So where was Dad? What happened to the father? RedState continues the story, saying:

On July 17th, 2019, when Dagney was 11 years old, an arrest warrant was issued for James Everette Hughes, Dagney’s father. He was arrested on July 31st, 2019, in Sebastian County, AR. The charge was for rape of a minor under the age of 14, during the time period between May 2017 and August 2017, when Dagney was nine years old. Among many witnesses was Sue Benedict, the grandmother who would adopt Dagney in 2019.

Hughes would accept a plea deal to sexual assault in the second degree on November 27th, 2019. He was sentenced to five years in prison with ten years suspended. He would be placed on the sex offender list and have no contact with his daughter. He was arrested again on January 25th, 2024, by the Little Rock Police Department for failing to comply with reporting as a sex offender.

That was two weeks before Dagney took her own life. The details of the rest of this story are difficult to read.

Hughes’ new case, in Pulaski County, AR, 60CR-24-894: State v. James Everette Hughes, was filed on March 5th, 2024 for the offense of failing to register as a sex offender or report address change. … Case details are difficult to read, and the following information is graphic. In the report, Dagney, age 11, would tell investigators her father anally raped her when she was nine years old. She reported he had molested her for years prior.

This is obviously a story of horrific physical sexual abuse of a child by her own father that resulted in confusion, mental illness, and problems that deserve nothing but sympathy.

But the media treated this as a case of conservative anti-trans bigotry, which is insane, sick, and wrong. Will the media walk any of what they did back here?

Of course not because their original story backs their particular narrative. That particular narrative is that America is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place.

And their proof of that is that Nex Benedict, a young girl, committed suicide and that she must have done so because society was too mean to her — as opposed to the very specific circumstances of what appears to be a deeply tragic life.