Jailed for eight weeks for homophobic attack

Cristian Dobre said he disliked gay people and said he wrote with one hand and punched with the other.

He told police homosexuality was against God and two men kissing in public was the equivalent of a heterosexual couple having sex in public and it should not happen in front of children.

The 26-year-old, of Room 8, Rougemount, St John’s Road, St Peter Port, admitted assaulting two people and using threatening behaviour towards another.

Jailing him for a total of eight weeks, Judge Graeme McKerrell said that the abuse was the same as racial abuse and totally unacceptable.

The judge said it was behaviour such as this which set back the drive for equality that many people had striven for and had worked so hard to achieve.

Prosecuting officer Sarah Watson told the court how the incident had happened between 12.50am and 1.20am on 14 January.

A female member of bar staff from The Thomas de la Rue had been working that night and her boyfriend was in the pub. At the end of her shift she was standing outside the door of the pub. Some two hours earlier she and her boyfriend had met a gay man and the two men joined her at the door.

Dobre approached from the High Street and there was an exchange between him and the woman when she told him he could not enter the pub.

The defendant began shouting and making derogatory remarks in general, but also about gay people and he seemed to know the other man.

When the gay man asked him what was wrong with gay people, the defendant took his jacket off and went to within one metre of him with both palms raised.

He continued to shout and the gay man thought he was about to be pushed over. When the woman’s boyfriend got between the two men, the defendant punched him on the left side of the jaw.

When her boyfriend tried to push the defendant away, the woman got between them.

The defendant then pushed her to the floor, resulting in breaking her thumb and grazing her elbow. She was off work for two weeks due to the broken thumb.

In interview later he said he had been drinking that day and by the time of the incident had found it difficult to stand. He recalled smoking outside The Thomas de la Rue but could not remember punching anyone. He admitted being homophobic, but could not remember the phrases he had used.

He had no previous convictions.

His advocate, Phoebe Cobb, said the prosecution facts were accepted.

Her client had been to watch football in a pub that afternoon and had drunk a significant amount of alcohol. He had struggled to remember things, hence his initial denials.

He did not recognise the person referred to in the summary and said it was out of character. No injury was caused by the punch, and the assault on the woman was admitted on a reckless basis. He did not know why he had used such awful words. A letter from his employer referred to him as an exemplary member of staff.

Judge McKerrell said the defendant had clearly had too much to drink that day, but it had been his choice to do so.

This had been a vile and utterly prejudiced rant. The woman had quite properly refused him access to the bar and when she and her boyfriend had gone to assistance of the other man, they were assaulted for their troubles.

‘Whether these were your true feelings or not, your behaviour was outrageous and unpleasant,’ he said.

‘It was a prolonged and sustained tirade of abuse directed at a specific section of our community.

‘I see it as no less serious than racial abuse which is also totally unacceptable.’

Sentences of four weeks prison, concurrent, were imposed for the assaults on the woman and her boyfriend. Four weeks, consecutive, was added for using threatening behaviour towards the other man taking the total sentence to eight weeks.