Homophobic attack on two women on London bus.

[StriderX]

Or as the courts call it........."evidence" i.e. the exact thing people should be basing a judgement on, and the video shows no violence occurs until the blonde woman punches a kid which then starts the whole chain of violence and theft. Still doesn't make the kids any less wrong for their verbal abuse of the women etc but the fact remains that the video evidence shows that the violence was started by the blonde woman, which is definitely NOT how the story was reported initially.

A single piece of evidence is not worthy of debate (unless of course it is the only piece of evidence), as it's a limited view, it is hearsay, while strong evidence, it is ignoring the before and after, it is ignoring the whole testimonies as well as whatever other evidence there is.

As i said, the only justified answer is the judgement itself.

 

[dowie]

From the story, weren't the kids already throwing coins at the women before the scuffle started? Does that not count as violence?

Yup - not clear form the video but if that can be shown then reacting to it by laying into them is justified. It isn't like throwing coins is like some numpties throwing popcorn in a cinema or just something mildly annoying, they can cause damage/pain and you'd have every right to respond with violence if someone was lobbing coins at you....

That is assume they actually were doing that.

If they were just goading them/shouting out abuse then the violent reaction perhaps wasn't justified (though given the public outrage and victim status of the women I wouldn't expect the police to charge them) - the youths are still little ****s though and deserve some form of punishment both for the initial abuse/harassment and for the later theft.

 

[Mark A]

I think in all seriousness that the fact they were Lesbians definitely was an incitement for the incident to happen, but equally the incident could've happened for any other arbitrary reason that the idiots decided at the time. They might have decided that a guy was wearing a wrong type of hat, or a girl had the wrong colour hair, etc; they probably don't hate people who are gay or lesbian, that would actually be giving them some credit in that they think that far ahead, it just happened to be the the thing that was different about them that gave them an excuse. I understand that it will no doubt be classed as a hate crime, but there was probably also someone stabbed to death that night for a different arbitrary reason like they live in the wrong post code, yet this incident is given precedent in the media because the victims happen to be gay. That's my issue with this story.

Very true. Yet it's only newsworthy when the attackers can be branded racist/homophobic/Islamophobic etc. Living in Burnley I saw this sort of thing happen on night busses all the time at weekends. A bunch of chavs get on the bus and anyone that stands out or looks weak is at risk of them sitting next to them and tormenting them.

 

[jpaul]

the judgement was made on the 29th.. if the Guardian can be believed. ?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ht-bus-harassment-was-scary-woman-tells-court

A 17-year-old boy has been sentenced to a four-month youth rehabilitation order for his part in the harassment and intimidation of two women on a late-night London bus in an incident which became the focus of concerns about the targeting of LGBTQ+ people
..
However, evidence had to be given in court on Friday after one of the accused, 17, denied his actions had been motivated by hostility based on the women’s sexual orientation. The other three were bailed for sentencing at later dates.

Williams found that the 17-year-old’s role in the incident was motivated by hostility towards their sexuality.

non-custodial, they don't reveal if the judge used the word homophobic, hate crime categorisation.

 

[StriderX]

Makes sense, there’s no reasonable need to waste resources beyond that.