Three teens jailed for homophobic attack
KICKED AND PUNCHED GAY COUPLE WHO HAD FALLEN ASLEEP ON TRAIN
THREE teenage boys have been jailed following a homophobic assault on a train from Reading to London.
The boys, two aged 16 and one aged 17, boarded the train at Hayes & Harlington station late on February 15 2017, when one of the 16-yearolds came across two men in a relationship who had fallen asleep on the train.
He went back to inform his friends who proceeded to chat with the men before attacking them.
The men were punched and kicked several times, and one was struck over the head with a glass bottle and stamped on by the boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Both men sustained extensive bruising to the head and face while one lost two teeth in the attack.
British Transport Police charged the trio with violent disorder. All three pleaded guilty at Uxbridge Magistrates Court.
One of the boys also pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon, the glass bottle.
The magistrates accepted the Crown Prosecution Service’s argument that the attack was motivated by hatred for the victims’ ‘actual or perceived’ sexual orientation.
An additional two months was added to each boy’s sentence at the hearing on Thursday September 14.
The trio will now serve six months in prison and be forced to pay £100 to each of their victims.
Lauranne Middleton, from the CPS, said: “This was a violent assault and we successfully argued that it was fuelled by the defendants’ homophobia.
“Where prosecutors have evidence that an attack was motivated by hostility towards someone’s sexual orientation, they will ask the court to consider this as an aggravating factor which deserves a harsher sentence. “This successful prosecution demonstrates how seriously the CPS treats such cases and our commit- ment to bringing offenders of hate crime to justice.”