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An eleventh suspect has been arraigned in connection with the recent anti-gay attacks in the Bronx. The charges against the suspects include sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment and assault on two teenagers and a 30-year-old man they believed to be gay.

The crimes occurred in the Morris Heights section of The Bronx, a borough which is home to more gay couples with kids than any other in New York City.

The bright blue awning with the rainbow flag graphic stands out in a bustling commercial block on East 149th Street in Mott Haven. That's the facade of The Bronx Community Pride Center, one of the few LGBT community service organizations in the borough. They focus on serving youths between the ages of 13-21, offering them everything from counseling to cultural programs.

Up several flights of stairs with walls painted the color of a treats in a candy dish, is Executive Director Dirk McCall's office. His phone has been ringing off the hook for the past week.

"People are very scared at this point in the borough that they are going to be the next person who gets attacked, so everyone is a little bit more on edge, watching a little bit more warily, things that might not have set you off before -- how should I interpret that.”

There were about three thousand gay couples living in the borough in 2000, according to a study by the Williams Institute. That's about 11 percent of the same sex couples in the whole city. But when you consider gay families in New York who have kids, more than a third of them call the Bronx their home. Those families mention affordability and racial diversity as some of the reasons for picking the borough. But McCall says it's still hard to be "out" there because much of the borough is religiously conservative and in many ways has a "small town mentality. It's also a place struggling with massive economic challenges.

We are at the epicenter, along with Brooklyn, of the HIV epidemic in New York. Communities that aren't getting the resources we need to get so it’s a very tough place to live," says McCall.

According to the latest Census data, the Bronx has double the poverty rate of the rest of the country, 28.5 percent. And McCall says people who would normally identify themselves as gay in other parts of the city choose not to here.

"A lot of them view themselves as men who have sex with men or same gender loving or people who are living on the 'down low' -- it's a different type of conceptualization of what same sex attraction actually is,” according to McCall.

Anti-violence experts and others in the gay community believe that many bias attacks still go unreported. McCall hopes to change that. He's convening a meeting downstairs with a wide range of leaders from across the LGBT community in the Bronx to discuss what the next steps should be to combat violence and homophobia.

In the large rec room, a group of about 35 men and women of color, many of of them gay, sit in a circular formation in metal chairs. They appear to know each other.

As the conversation gets underway, the group realizes their outreach needs to be done on multiple fronts. Family of Faith pastor Vanessa Brown says the gay community must seize what she calls a teachable moment.

"If we don’t start addressing these things, you got kinds on the street that that don’t want to hear anything that anyone else has to say because of how they've been raised and we need to be able to do something community based wise as it relates to the straight community because that is who committing these acts against us."

Cesar Sanchez with the group Boogie Down Pride says too many young people are basically being instructed to discriminate. "These kids are learning this stuff. People are not born to hate we are born to love and they learn hate," Sanchez said.

But one of the youngest people in the meeting, 21-year-old Carlos Penja, who only recently came out to his family, says the problem he sees is more about ignorance.

"It's not really just all about hate. Today’s youth is really misinformed when it comes to our community. I have a lot straight friends and when I talk to them all they say is 'Why you chose to be gay, why you decide to be like this?' and I try to tell them it's not my decision," Penja said. "It's not like I woke up one day and said 'Oh, I’m going to be gay, I’m just going to like guys' -- it's not like that. It’s not just hate it’s also fear we have to address that."

More than two hours later, the group decides that the next steps should be not only expanding the city's Respect for All program to focus on gender identity issues, but also a series of town hall meetings and a large rally early next year.

Dirk McCall says it’s about stepping forward.

"It’s hard to dislike gay people once you know them personally. And once you meet them we're no longer the other, we're your friends, we're your neighbors and we’re your family."