Ukrainian LGBT activists are sounding the alarm after a group of youths raped, beat and robbed a young man in Zhytomyr, a city of over 265,000 people located 140 kilometers to the west of Kyiv.
The transgender youth ended up in the hospital after what he thought was a date turned into a night of torture by a gang.
The police, however, have called the assault “a conflict between young men” and opened an investigation only into the robbery.
Rights activists say this latest incident of an apparently hate-motivated crime shows the plight of LGBT people in Ukraine and the challenges they face in seeking justice. Ukrainian legislation does not recognize hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Three draft bills that propose including these crimes in the country’s criminal code have been submitted to parliament. However, LGBT rights advocates say these efforts have been undermined by a disinformation campaign from the church lobby and conservative activists who falsely claim that it will limit religious freedom and freedom of speech.
Ukrainian LGBT rights organization Nash Svit (Our World) reported that gay people are regularly targeted through online dating services and are subject to physical violence, harassment and extortion.
The 19-year-old victim from Zhytomyr, whose name hasn’t been disclosed over safety concerns, identifies as transgender woman and uses male pronouns.
In his report to the police published by Hromadske, the victim said he met a 17-year-old youth on dating app Badoo, and they subsequently met late on April 29 in person. Although his date knew about his gender identity, he reacted negatively at first, but then suggested buying drinks and having them near the river.
There, the assailant forced his victim to perform oral sex on him. He then called someone on the phone, took the victim into the bushes and started beating him. Soon, a car arrived with four young men and one woman.
The victim described the harrowing details of the torture that followed: The attackers stripped him naked, handcuffed him, broke his nose, tried to rape him, threatened to kill him and filmed the process on their mobile phones. They then forced him to walk naked and bleeding on the road while they followed him in a car. Near the victim’s home, where he lives with his parents, the attackers threatened him with a knife and demanded he pay them Hr 10,000 ($370).
Zhytomyr police, however, offered a different version of the events. They claimed that the victim “posed as a woman on a dating app and came to the date dressed in feminine clothing and wearing makeup.” The oral sex was consensual, and the attackers weren’t acquainted, the police claimed in a press release on May 5.
“One of the partners suspected that he had (actually) not met with a girl, and a conflict broke out between them,” the official press release stated. “During the fight, a car passed by the young men. The driver and passengers intervened in the situation.”
The police opened a criminal case into the robbery and arranged a medical examination of the victim’s injuries.
However, in his statement, the victim claims that the medical exam didn’t 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.
The victim is currently in a hospital, has found a lawyer and is convinced that the attack was motivated by homophobia and transphobia. In his report to the police, he alleges torture, intentionally causing severe bodily harm, a violation of the equal rights of citizens and trespassing.
Oleksandr Zinchenko, an expert at Nash Svit, told the Kyiv Post that the anti-gay slurs used by the assailants against the victim point to the fact that the attack was motivated by hate.
According to Nash Svit, there were 123 cases of crimes based on homophobia and transphobia in 2019. Almost a third of them were “mixed-type hate crimes,” when perpetrators found victims on gay dating websites, collected their personal information and blackmailed them, threatening to publicly disclose their sexual orientation if they did not pay money. The rest of the cases were physical assaults and harassment.
Unfortunately, victims rarely turn to the police, fearing discrimination, Zinchenko said. They only do it in the most serious incidents, such as the one in Zhytomyr, or if they suffer major financial losses. But even in such cases, they report robbery or fraud and hide their sexual orientation.
The Ukrainian Criminal Code lists “the violation of the equal rights of citizens based on race, nationality, and religion” as a crime punishable by a prison term of up to five years. Article 161 of the Code also states that it is illegal to discriminate against citizens based on their political beliefs, sex, language, place of residency, ethnic and social origin, and other characteristics.
A few investigations into homophobic crimes have been opened under this article. One was into the beating of openly gay Donbas war veteran Vasyl Davydenko in October 2019. However, none of the cases reached the court, said Andriy Maimulakhin, coordinator at Nash Svit.
One of the draft bills submitted to parliament proposes adding “sexual orientation and gender identity” to this article but has faced enormous pushback from some Christian groups.
