He Was Brutally Assaulted Outside Planned Parenthood. His Attacker Hasn’t Been Held Accountable

Radical abortion activists love to call pro-life people violent, and to treat them as such under the law. But experience proves that just the opposite is true.

Bryan Kemper, Priests for Life’s coordinator of street activism, has been in the thick of it since the rescue movement began in the 1980s.

“I’ve been punched and beaten in front of abortion mills more times than I can count,” Kemper said. “I’ve had guns pulled on me twice. I’ve had cops hit me with Billy clubs.”

Priests for Life Senior Vice President Jerry Horn also has been in the fight for more than 30 years and he has been chased by abortion business owners on numerous occasions. At one memorable rescue in Texas, the mill owner and a male companion pulled a pro-lifer into the facility, beat him up and then pushed him back outside, throwing bags of dirt at the rescuers.

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“All of a sudden guys started ripping their shirts off and the girls didn’t know what to do,” Horn recalled. “They had put fire ants in the bags, and things went from bad to worse.”

Horn also remembers being outside an abortion mill in Wisconsin when a female guard “jumped on my back, pulled my hair and tried to wrestle me to the ground.” The police were called and, “incredibly,” he said, “I got arrested. They said I incited her to violence.”

The bogus claim of inciting abortion advocates into violence certainly played a role in the outcome of an outrageous assault on two senior citizen pro-lifers in Baltimore in 2023.

Eighty-four-year-old Patrick Schaefer and 73-year-old Mark Crosby were at their usual spots in front of a Planned Parenthood when a tall young man approached the three pro-abortion escorts, shook each of their hands and then began an exchange with Schaefer.

According to the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Schaefer at what would be the first of two trials, the man and Schaefer had a brief exchange about sin and salvation before the man told the pro-lifer to “quit bothering vulnerable people.”

Schaefer responded, “It’s a child,” after which the man handed the drink he was holding to a Planned Parenthood escort, then rushed into Schaefer, plowing him backwards into a large concrete planter. Schaefer was knocked unconscious, coming to several minutes later.

But the assailant wasn’t done. As Crosby rushed toward his unconscious friend, the man ran at him and knocked him down, pulled off the crucifix he wears around his neck, straddled him while punching him in the face, then kicked him in the head as he climbed off. The crucifix had been thrown into the bushes.

Every second of these two brutal assaults was caught on video, from multiple angles. Some include audio. The man was young – 28, it would turn out – and well over six feet tall. He looked like a white man.

It took Baltimore police a full year to arrest a suspect, Patrick Brice. After his arrest on misdemeanor and felony assault charges and reckless endangerment, he was released with no bail.

At his trial in February, Brice’s lawyer said Schaefer had made a racial slur that offended Brice – who is biracial – and that triggered the attack.

“The idea that Dick Schaefer and I are racist is ridiculous,” said Crosby, who lives in government housing where 190 of the 200 residents are Black. Schaefer is a member of a predominantly Black church.

“Ninety-eight percent of the babies Dick saves are Black,” Crosby added.

When the jury came back with its verdict, the victims were stunned. Brice was convicted of the misdemeanor charges but acquitted of the felony against Schaefer. The jury deadlocked over the felony charge against Crosby.

Judge Yvette Bryant ordered a retrial on that felony charge. But no jury would be empaneled; the decision would rest with the judge alone. At the one-day trial June 25, Brice’s attorney argued that his client never meant to hurt the men and, in retrospect, was sorry about the whole thing.

Saying Crosby’s intention in running toward his friend was unclear and that Crosby was argumentative on the stand, she acquitted Brice of the felony. He remains free until his sentencing on Aug. 7.

After spending three days in Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center with an orbital fracture to his right eye, broken fingers and severe bruising, Crosby was discharged with hearing loss, permanent sensitivity to bright light and a constant sensation of having a foreign body in his eye.

Crosby was represented by Assistant State’s Attorney Ashley Sudberry, but he also had a private attorney, Terrell Roberts, III, who was hired by the pro-life Thomas More Society as an advocate for Crosby. Roberts called the acquittal a “miscarriage of justice.”

“A first-degree assault is committed when a person intentionally causes serious physical injury to another person. Here there was no dispute that Brice caused a serious physical injury to Mark Crosby,” Roberts said. “For anyone to conclude, as the judge did, that Crosby’s action was legally adequate provocation is absurd. The judge was plainly wrong and misapplied the law. She should have known better.”

Pro-lifers are well aware of the so-called abortion distortion that suspends normal rules of law, logic, media coverage and public policy when the topic is the killing of the innocent unborn. That Patrick Brice was able to walk away from two felony charges, even when there is incontrovertible video evidence of his brutal crime – and lasting injuries to at least one victim – is proof that the abortion distortion is still very much in play.

Little is known about Patrick Brice or what happened to him to make him so pro-abortion that he would be willing to inflict violence on two men more than 50 years older than him. But what we know about Schaefer and Crosby is much more important: Both of them were back in front of Planned Parenthood within days of the attack, and remain there two years later.

“I’m still in the battle and I’m not going away,” Crosby said. “I don’t know what the ending will be, but I’m sticking with the fight. What happened to us is nothing compared to what happens to the babies every single day.”

LifeNews Note: Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. The books he has authored include Abolishing Abortion and Proclaiming the Message of Life.

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