British Man Speaks Out After Brutal Homophobic Assault
Lewis North, a 32-year-old business owner, says he was jumped, bitten, and viciously beaten by a man who screamed anti-gay slurs and told him that he "shouldn't be allowed to walk the street."
Police have taken a suspect into custody in the case.
North was walking homeward through Nottingham, England in the early morning hours of Jan. 7 after a night with his friends at gay club New Foresters when the brutal attack took place, Australian newspaper the Star Observer recounted.
Speaking with Yahoo! News, North said that the attacker's bloodlust extended beyond beating him; the assailant also bit him on the ear.
North described walking past a shopping center when he saw "somebody in the far distance ahead of me and this person was trying to hide, but I didn't really know what they were doing."
When he passed the spot where the individual was hiding, the man leapt out at him and subjected him to a torrent of threats, North said.
"He's telling me that he's going to stab me. He's going to kill me. He's going to beat me up for being gay," North recounted to Yahoo! News. "He's telling me that I shouldn't be allowed out, that I shouldn't be allowed to walk the street."
North told the man to "fuck off," he said, and that was when the attack turned physical. "I go straight to the floor, and he just starts beating the living shit out of me, and I'm thinking, what the hell is going on here?" North said.
The attacker "continued punching him, calling him a 'faggot' and 'batty boy,' and asking if he thinks it's acceptable to be gay, recalls North, who is director of his own architecture, interior and landscape design business," Yahoo! News said.
At some point in the struggle, registering his fall to the ground, North'a Apple watch kicked in, automatically sending a distress message to emergency services as well as to North's emergency contacts. As police vehicles approached, the assailant fled.
But then, North related, he had to face what felt to him like police indifference to the ordeal he'd just been subjected to for no reason other than his perceived sexuality.
"After walking around the corner and telling police what happened and saying, 'that man needs arresting,' he says an officer replied: 'You don't need to tell me how to do my job, I know what I'm doing.'"
The police later told him that he would be expected to provide a statement.
"I was like, 'Sorry, what?' I'm mauled like a dog here and I want safety from you, and you're pushing me away," North told Yahoo! News.
The Nottingham police are taking the attack seriously and treating it as a hate crime, the Star Observer reported. "We arrested a 22-year-old man for Actual Bodily Harm," the newspaper quoted Chief inspector James Walker, who handles hate crimes with the city's police force. "Investigations are ongoing and we continue to support the victim," Walker added.
North told Yahoo! News that he's "emotionally fragile" but "determined not to let the ordeal stop him enjoying nights out" with his friends — though some in the city's LGBTQ+ community have taken the message from the horrific episode that they need to be on the alert and observe precautions for their own safety.
"Firstly they're all making sure I'm okay, but secondly, they're talking about safety in numbers, traveling together and sharing locations on our phones," North explained, adding: "It's quite scary to think that we have to do this in 2024. We've just started the year and we're already seeing hate crime against our community."
But violence targeting the LGBTQ+ community is nothing new and has been getting increasingly worse over the last decade. Yahoo! News quoted Stonewall's Robbie de Santos, who said in comments last year that "Political leaders haven't acted seriously or quickly enough."
"Instead, many of them are filling the public domain with toxic language that dehumanizes LGBTQ+ people and legitimizes violence," de Santos observed.