Birmingham’s LGBT+ community ‘doesn’t feel safe on the streets’ after spate of homophobic attacks

Birmingham’s LGBT+ community is frightened, anxious and appalled after yet another homophobic attack in the city’s Gay Village.

There was widespread shock and revulsion on social media over the weekend when John-Paul Kesseler shared a photo of himself with blood streaming down his face after he was attacked for holding another man’s hand in the early hours of Sunday morning (10 October).

Kesseler was on his way back to a hotel with a friend at the end of a night out in Birmingham’s Gay Village when a stranger told them to stop holding hands.

The man subsequently reached into his car, pulled out an empty wine bottle, and hit Kesseler across the head with it. The assailant went on to hit him with a metal pole.

The shocking attack is just the latest in a string of anti-LGBT+ hate crimes to take place in Birmingham in recent months. In September, a gay man named Matt Brooks was rushed to hospital after he was punched in the face in the city’s Gay Village.

The punch was so forceful that Brooks was left with a fractured eye socket. He had to undergo emergency surgery to save his eyesight.

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