Homophobic attack: a crowd is ordered to compensate two young people attacked for their sexual orientation

A judgment condemned a crowd to compensate two young people who assaulted because of sexual orientation while having breakfast in a hamburger in the capital Buenos Aires. The event occurred on December 1, 2017 and had already been the subject of a conviction in the criminal field “for grievous bodily harm qualified as having been committed with hatred towards sexual orientation”.

The deputy judge Ignacio Rebaudi Basavilbaso, in charge of the Civil Court 22 of the City of Buenos Aires, ordered the payment of the repair of 34,600,000 pesos a group of 7 young people who on December 1, 2017 assaulted “JC” while he was having breakfast with his friend “SN” in the McDonald’s from Avenida Córdoba 3831 in the city of Buenos Aires. In this sense, according to the lawsuit brought by the two defendants, “JC” and “SN” – who were 25 and 24 years old respectively at the time – were placing their order at the counter when they saw the group enter, with with whom They had a brief dialogue. Thereafter “the defendants began to make loud comments of the caliber of ‘Today I woke up wanting to hit a putto like you‘”.

It was 6:30 in the morning and “JC” went out to smoke a cigarette in the parking lot of the square. At that time, according to the sentence he had access to GlobeLiveMedia, “After going back and forth and being verbally reprimanded, one of the band members (…) punched co-actor JC from behind.” After which the rest of the crowd immediately left the interior of the premises “to throw themselves on him and kick and punch himwhile saying phrases such as ‘Kill it for a bitch, eat it for a bitch, motherfucker, if you got tattoos, bank it now”.

“The event turned unpredictably into a hateful, gang attack on a single personwho, of course, did not want or show the intention to fight or to be savagely attacked by a mob, and all this motivated solely and exclusively by the sexual orientation of the victim, ”said the judge.

You may be interested: New brutal caning at the exit of a bowling: a teenager was left unconscious

The beating ended when “SN shouted that he was going to scratch the vehicle which appeared to belong to one of the assailants, which distracted them, allowing ‘JC’ to escape as quickly as possible through the car park”. Following the attack, the victim was admitted to the Guemes Hospital with continued treatment, as he was about to lose his right eye.

On November 28, 2019, the Criminal and Correctional Oral Court 16 of the City of Buenos Aires sentenced the gang -Gastón Trotta, Alejandro Trotta, Rodrigo Cardozo, Juan Olivieri, Facundo Curto, Juan Antolini and Jonathan Romero Escobar- to three-year suspended prison sentence for the offense of aggravated injuries for having been committed with hatred towards sexual orientation after an abbreviated judgment agreement. This resolution was taken into account by the judge Rebaudi Basavilbaso at the time of accrediting the facts, themselves recorded by the cameras and by witnesses who consumed on the spot.

You may be interested: A mob beat a man to death at a gas station

In this context, when fixing the amount of compensation, the magistrate assessed the reports of the medical and psychological experts who diagnosed the two victims under “chronic post-traumatic stress disorder“because of the event suffered. He also assessed the damage received “due to a disability“-whose content “includes any physical or mental decline”-, and for “moral damage, biological damage and life project”.

On the other hand, with regard to “SN” – who was not beaten – he declared that “Although she was not the main victim of the attack (…) she was with ‘JC’ at the time of the fierce attack», with which it was appropriate to consider him as attacked. Thus, the judge decided to order the crowd to pay a total of 34,600,000 pesos within 10 days, including 25,400,000 for “JC” and 9,200,000 for his friend “SN”.

Continue reading: