Trans youth chased home, naked and bleeding, after being sexually assaulted by teen he met on dating app
A transgender youth was allegedly beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of people after he had gone on a date. The incident happened in Zhytomyr, Ukraine and the alleged attackers consisting of five men and one woman including the youth’s date. They allegedly stripped him naked, handcuffed him, tried to rape him, and chased him home while he was bleeding.
The 19-year-old victim, whose name has not been released, identifies as a transgender woman, and uses male pronouns. The person is currently in a hospital after the brutal attack.
According to reports, the victim met his date, a 17-year-old youth, on a dating app called Badoo before meeting in person on April 29. Though his date knew about his gender identity beforehand, he first seemed put off before suggesting buying drinks and having them near a river.
After reaching the river, the 17-year-old reportedly forced the victim to perform oral sex on him, after which he called someone and took the victim to the bushes and began beating him. Describing his harrowing details to the police, the transgender woman said that soon after the phone call, a car arrived with four men and one woman. All the assailants including his date started torturing him.
The alleged attackers first stripped the victim naked then handcuffed him, broke his nose, tried to rape him, threatened to kill him, and filmed the process on their mobile phones. They also reportedly asked the transgender woman to walk naked while bleeding on the road while they followed him in the car. Near the victim’s house, which he shares with his parents, the group threatened him with a knife and demanded him to pay them 10,000 hryvnia ($370).
The alleged incident has left Ukrainian LGBT activists alarmed as they have deemed it as a hate-motivated crime. The activists have also said that the attack shows the condition of LGBT people in the Eastern European country, where the legislation does not recognize hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Ukrainian LGBT rights organization Nash Svit’s expert, Oleksandr Zinchenko, said that the anti-gay slurs used by the group against the transgender woman point to the fact that it was motivated by hate.
In 2019 alone, there were 123 cases of homophobia and transphobia crimes as per the organization's report, where almost a third of them were “mixed-type hate crimes,” when attackers found their victims on gay dating websites, collected their personal information and blackmailed them.
On the other hand, police in Zhytomyr, a city of over 265,000 people located 140 kilometers to the west of Kiev, have called the attack “a conflict between young men” and investigating the case solely as a robbery.
The officials have claimed that the victim “posed as a woman on a dating app and came to the date dressed in feminine clothing and wearing makeup.” They also added that the oral sex was consensual while refusing any other person’s involvement in the alleged attack.
“One of the partners suspected that he had (actually) not met with a girl, and a conflict broke out between them. During the fight, a car passed by the young men. The driver and passengers intervened in the situation,” a press release by the police read.
Police also arranged a medical examination for the victim’s injuries, who alleged that the medical test did not include a rape kit.
“At the moment, I am in a great state of fear for my life. I also worry a lot for my parents because the assailants know where I live and saw my parents when they broke into our front yard,” he wrote in his statement.
The victim has also found a lawyer and is sure that the attack was motivated by homophobia and transphobia. He has accused the group of torture, intentionally causing severe bodily harm, a violation of the equal rights of citizens, and trespassing in his report to the police.