by A man who was bitten and stabbed in a vicious attack on his way home from a gay pub says he is scared to go back home but is determined to get his confidence back.
Lewis North, 32, was walking home from the New Foresters, in Nottingham, and was passing through the Victoria Center when he was confronted by a lone man at around 2.30am on Sunday. “I could see someone far ahead and this person was trying to hide, but I didn’t know what they were doing,” he tells Yahoo News.
After he fired several bullets into the shopping centre, he says a man jumped out at him and “tried to scare him. “He’s telling me he’s going to stop me. It’s going to kill me. He’s going to beat me up for being gay. He’s telling me I shouldn’t be allowed to go out, I shouldn’t be allowed to walk the street,” says North.
After replying “f**k off”, North, who is originally from North Lincolnshire, says he walked outside the building to the forecourt when the man started picking on him. He said: “I just go to the floor, and he starts beating the life out of me, and I’m thinking, what’s going on here?”
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North says he called for help, but no one was around to intervene, but he then had a chance to fight back and managed to keep the attacker on the ground. During the struggle, he says the man cut off one of his ears and spat on him.
At some point during the fight, North says he managed to grab his attacker’s watch and threw it into the road in hopes of hitting a car and getting someone’s attention – to no avail. With no sign of the attacker backing him up, North says he felt “overwhelmed” and fell to the floor.
He says the hard fall alerted emergency services, his close friends and family to his Apple watch and prompted a 999 call on his phone. The man kept picking on him, calling him “f****t” and “b***y boy”, and asking him if he thought it was acceptable to be gay, recalls North, who is a director on its own architecture, inside. and landscape design business.
He says: “It reaches the point where I can’t take anything more so when they are there they just give up and I think that’s where I suffer most of the injuries on my face.”
North, who was left with cuts to the head and a swollen face, says he then remembers seeing blue lights in the distance as his attacker took off. After walking around the corner and telling the police what happened and saying, “that guy needs to be arrested”, he says an officer replied: “You don’t need to tell me how to job, I know what I’m doing.”
“I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ I’m barking like a dog here and I’m asking you for safety, and you’re pushing me,” North recalls. He says he then walked back to the New Foresters and talked to his friends and security at the entrance, when the police caught up with him and said they would take a witness statement the next morning.
‘I’m determined to put myself back there’
North says he went out to the Lord Roberts on Tuesday, a gay pub in the city, noticing a change in mood among him and his friends.
“I was very scared. I had to change the way I usually go and I was afraid of one of my friends that I didn’t hear back from,” he says. “Opinions have changed a bit and the dynamics of the group have changed. Firstly they’re all making sure I’m ok, but secondly, they’re talking about safety in numbers, traveling together and sharing locations on our phones.
“It’s pretty scary to think that we have to do this in 2024. We’ve just started the year and we’re already seeing hate crimes against our community.”
North says he’s feeling emotionally vulnerable since the attack and is staying over with friends so he’s not home alone at night. However, he says he is determined not to let the ordeal stop him from enjoying nights out in the city, even if it still feels “a bit scary”.
“I have to put myself into it. If I don’t do it it will only get worse,” he says. “I’m going to get back on the horse and start riding again. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so I’m a lot more positive coming out of this.”
Confirming that officers are treating the incident as a hate crime, Nottinghamshire Police Chief Inspector James Walker told Yahoo News UK: “We take all allegations of violence and hate crime very seriously and officers responded quickly to an attack on 7 Mill Street January around the world. 2.35 am
“Officers at the scene assisted the 32-year-old victim after he was punched in the face. We arrested a 22-year-old man for ABH [actual bodily harm]. Right now, we are treating this as a hate crime. Investigations are ongoing and we continue to support the victim.”
Homophobic attacks have risen significantly over the past decade
Homophobic attacks have increased in recent years. According to Home Office figures, sexual orientation-related hate crimes fell by 6% to 24,102 offenses in the year ending March 2023, while transgender hate crimes increased by 11%, to 4,732 offences.
However, the slight decrease in the first category is a peak of the trend, with the chart below, provided by Statista, showing how the number of crimes committed against people due to their sexual orientation has risen significantly since 2014 for.
Referring to the overall rise late last year, Robbie de Santos, director of external affairs at Stonewall, said: “Political leaders have not acted seriously or quickly enough. Instead many of them are filling the public sphere with toxic language that dehumanizes LGBTQ+ people and legitimizes violence. The UK Government has failed to implement any kind of strategy that matches its own statistics and reports.
“We need strong, committed leadership that will move away from divisive distractions and instead address the real problems of the people in this country. We should not be treated as second-class citizens.”
