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Gay Pride News: A gay barman was viciously assaulted for being gay just hours before Leeds Pride
By: Nigel Robinson
Attack happened 48 hours before Pride
Attack happened 48 hours before Pride
Gay man beaten unconscious on eve of Pride
Leeds barman Dane Holdsworth, 21, was beaten up on Friday night, just forty-eight hours before the town’s Pride event, when two men in their twenties spotted his rainbow-coloured wristband and asked him if he was gay.
“I said 'yeah' - I'm not going to lie about it,” he told the BBC’s Look North programme.
“They looked as if they were just going to walk off, then as they walked past one of them grabbed me and pulled me down and they just started laying into me.
“I passed out while they were hitting me. One of them sat on top of me while the other was hitting me. And then I think one of them bit me and then they tried to strangle me."
Dane said that the attack, which lasted fifteen minutes, had left him mentally damaged and afraid to go out.
Terry George, Dane’s boss at the Viaduct pub in the heart of Leeds’ gay village, told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “We had 23,000 people in the city to celebrate [Leeds Pride] and a number of bars where people can integrate in a measured way.
“I believed we had a mature society and then all of a sudden this happens.
“Perhaps we have not come as far as I thought."
West Yorkshire Police are investigating the attack.
