Gay student’s violent ordeal after night out
A FIRST YEAR Halifax student was viciously assaulted on his way back from Toffs nightclub at the end of last term, in what is thought to have been a homophobic attack. This comes after a series of violent assaults on York students, amounting to five separate incidents over the past year.
The victim was attacked while walking home on the last Sunday of term with three friends, all members of York Pride. Two of them, including Halifax’s Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Officer Scott
Dixon, were holding hands when the attacker approached the group. Dixon observed: “The guy came up from behind us, walking in the same direction and asked us what we were doing holding hands and started getting really homophobic and aggressive towards us.”
The attacker became aggravated when the group responded to his homophobic comments. His victim revealed: “I said something back, naturally, because I’m very loud-mouthed when I’m drunk; it was probably something like ‘yer, you know you like it’ or something, hinting that he was secretly gay.”
Dixon suggested that his friend’s “quick-witted remarks” provoked the attacker: “I don’t remember properly, but he passed us because he was walking slightly faster than we were and then I think [the victim] kept on going. He got pushed onto the grass and then the guy just, out of nowhere, hit him in the face – really hard. He was just aggressive.”
Reflecting on the assault, the first year commented: “I fell over like a lamp. I don’t really get into fights very often and I just fell over. It wasn’t much of a fight!”
The student explained his reasons for not wanting to be named in this report after his ordeal: “I don’t want everyone to think ‘oh, that was the guy who got attacked’.” He was initially hesitant to get the police involved:
“After it happened I just wanted to go home, I didn’t feel like going over the attack with the police at that point.” One friend commented, “he really didn’t want to talk to the police at first; it took us a while to persuade him.”
The police had been on the scene only minutes after the incident had occurred. The group flagged down a passing police van and explained the situation. One friend got into the van to try and find the attacker: “We spent quite a while going round the streets, and down the little alleys that the policemen knew about – where they felt he could have got away.” Although the police stopped one suspect on the night, they could not arrest him because of the lack of evidence.
After the attack, the victim explained: “The ambulance guy wanted to take me to hospital but I just wanted to go home.” His friends described their shock at his injuries, one commented: “He had blood on his face and eventually the whole side of his face had swollen up.”
Dixon agreed on the severity of the damage: “The left side of his face was hugely swollen. It was bright red and flecked with, what looked like, blood under the skin. We were here [at University] for a week afterwards and it hadn’t gone down … it hadn’t disappeared at all.”
John Rose, Student Union Welfare Officer, expressed his despair at this most recent incident: “To be honest, I’m a real defeatist when it comes to this. I’m really not surprised people are being beaten up for being gay because that’s the society we live in.
“As a union, we don’t tolerate homophobic incidents or other forms of discrimination. I really hate it happening; it really makes me angry.”
After the attack, the offender had left the group. Dixon explained “he stopped and I, in more words than this, just told him to go away and he just mouthed something again – which I can’t remember – walked passed us and carried on walking and disappeared up the road … he sort of casually walked off.”
The group explained that they did not want to go after him because they were worried about their friend who, at that point, was still on the ground: “We were more worried about [him] and finding his glasses which had fallen off when he was hit.”
Contemplating a motive for the attack, Dixon said: “He [the attacker] didn’t seem completely intoxicated or anything like that but he might well have been drinking and that made him aggressive. There was no immediate indication that he was. Other than that he was completely homophobic, I can’t think of another reason why you’d bother.”
“He wasn’t really scared of four fags walking down the road,” added the victim.
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