Gloucester Homophobic Harassment Involves 13 And 3 Year Old

November 06, 2009

 

A 13-year-old boy is currently facing charges at the Gloucester Youth Court, with one witness seeing a 3-year-old toddler involved in the incident.

The 13 year old boy, who cannot be named due to his age, stands accused of harassing Howard Jeans-Seymour, Imad Belkhadradia and Mark Fern.

Jeans-Seymour while on the witness stand said: "I would put the smaller one at around three to four," he told Judge Joti Bopa-Rai at Gloucester Youth Court.

The court heard that homophobic abuse was at the order of the day up until November 2008, when police installed closed circuit television outside the home of Jeans-Seymour. The homophobic abuse however started up again with the removal of the CCTV cameras, with a series of incidents taking place on the 2nd, 5th, 25th and 27th of February this year.

Jeans Seymour testified that on 2 November while he went looking for his partner he saw a group of youths outside and thatthere were five of them.

"One was throwing the snowballs and they were making them and handing them to him. The snowballs hit my bedroom windows." He believed around five snowballs, containing stones, were thrown. "There were stones on the window ledge," he said, before describing the alleged attacker and the rest of the group.

"The others were anything between 10 and 13," he said. "They ran off and the one who I considered to have thrown the snowballs stood there in defiance."

The victim stated that he was the victim of homophobic verbal abuse, with comments hurled his way regarding his appearance and sexuality.

"His father of the accused according to the victim, brought his son over to apologise for his behaviour, but that the boy only mumbled something under his breath, something which he did not consider an apology. He then said to the father:

"I said I was not stopping any process because it was in the hands of the police.

"The father said "fair enough" and shook my hand and went off."

The case continues.

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