A 75-year-old pro-life activist, left with permanent vision and hearing loss after a vicious beating outside a Baltimore abortion clinic, is pleading with the Trump administration’s Justice Department to step in and deliver the justice a local court denied him.
Mark Crosby, a lifelong Catholic sidewalk counselor who has spent decades praying for unborn children and offering support to women facing crisis pregnancies, sent a desperate letter Thursday to the DOJ, accusing the Maryland judiciary of a “gross miscarriage of justice” in the sentencing of his attacker.
The appeal comes nearly two years after the May 26, 2023, assault that left Crosby and his 84-year-old friend Richard “Dick” Schaefer, battered and bloodied in broad daylight.
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“I was there to save lives, to tell women their babies are precious gifts from God,” Crosby said in a statement read in court by his attorney, Terrell Roberts. “We were in no position to defend ourselves. To treat elderly folks with that kind of brutality is shocking.”
Surveillance video captured the horror in chilling detail: Patrick Brice, then 28, erupts into a heated exchange with Schaefer over abortion outside the Planned Parenthood Baltimore City Health Center on North Howard Street. Brice, handing his drink to a clinic escort, charges like a bull, tackling the frail octogenarian into a concrete planter and rendering him unconscious. As Crosby rushes to his friend’s aid, Brice turns on him, hurling him to the ground, straddling his chest and raining punches and kicks to the head.
Witnesses and Crosby later alleged Brice tore a crucifix from the victim’s neck — a symbol of the Christian faith that fuels his pro-life mission.The attack shattered Crosby’s right eye orbit and cheekbone, requiring metal implants and months of grueling rehabilitation. He now battles photophobia, a debilitating sensitivity to light that forces him to shield his eyes even indoors, alongside lasting hearing impairment and chronic pain. Schaefer, too, suffered a concussion from the impact.
A GoFundMe launched by the Baltimore County Right to Life chapter has raised thousands to cover Crosby’s mounting medical bills, a testament to the tight-knit community of defenders of the unborn who see Crosby as a hero, not a provocateur.
Brice, convicted on two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment, dodged first-degree assault charges in dual trials before Baltimore City Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryan. The judge ruled prosecutors failed to prove intent for serious injury, despite the video evidence and Crosby’s life-altering wounds. In a sentencing hearing last month that stunned observers, Bryan handed down a mere year of home detention and three years of probation — no prison time — plus mandates for anger management, therapy and substance screening.
Prosecutors had demanded a decade behind bars to send a “strong message of deterrence” against violence targeting religious and political viewpoints.
“This was not a minor altercation between two parties with differing views on abortion,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, a pro-life legal powerhouse that represented Crosby. “It was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only ‘offense’ was praying for expectant mothers and offering life-affirming alternatives to abortion. The light sentence sends a dangerous signal: Attack pro-lifers with impunity, especially if you’re ideologically opposed to their stand for the innocent unborn.”
As Bryan exited the bench after the ruling, Crosby’s raw anguish echoed through the courtroom.
“What about my rights and my well-being?” he shouted, his voice cracking with the weight of betrayal.
Now, Crosby is turning to Washington for redress.
In his letter to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon — a staunch pro-life ally in the Trump administration — Crosby and Roberts urged federal prosecution under hate crime statutes. They argue Brice’s rage was fueled by anti-Christian animus, ignited by the victims’ rosaries, literature and gentle pleas to choose life over abortion.
Brice, who apologized tepidly in court while denying any bias against Christians, claimed he “snapped” over a perceived racial slight — a claim pro-life advocates dismiss as deflection from his abortion-fueled fury.
The incident underscores a chilling pattern since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, unleashing a wave of hostility against peaceful pro-life witnesses. From firebombings of pregnancy centers to doxxing and arrests, advocates say the movement for the unborn faces escalating threats, often met with kid-glove treatment for perpetrators.
Crosby’s plea arrives as the Trump DOJ, bolstered by promises to protect religious freedoms and prosecute anti-life violence, eyes high-profile interventions.
