The Avignon correctional court sentenced two brothers and their accomplice to prison for trapping their victims via a gay dating site.
They had confessed to five assaults between 2022 and 2026. This Thursday, April 16, three young men were convicted by the Avignon correctional court for homophobic ambushes, guilty of beating up men targeted via the gay dating app Romeo.
The three men, who displayed a clean criminal record, were charged with violence with aggravating circumstances: violence in a group, with a weapon, and based on sexual orientation. Two of them, brothers aged 19 and 20, were sentenced to four years in prison, two years of which were suspended on probation. Their accomplice, who filmed the assaults, received 18 months in prison for aggravated violence, 12 months of which were suspended on probation.
Homophobic conflation
The trio’s modus operandi is well known in this type of homophobic assault: using a fake profile on a dating site to attract their victims to a meeting. For their defense, the two brothers’ lawyer, Maître Isabelle Cuilleret, argued that her clients had been “influenced by the fréquentation of masculinist sites” online. “They drew inspiration from what they saw on social networks. They had contacts on social networks in the United States”, she told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In a first instance, reports the daily La Provence, the three men had claimed before investigators that they organized these ambushes targeting gay men to “hunt pedophiles”. At the trial, one of them, named Ayoub, explained: “I watched videos when I was younger. They trapped child rapists”… Explaining a homophobic assault by a homophobic conflation: the defense did not hold.
>> Several homophobic ambushes are staged every week in France. To guard against them, it is necessary to apply some safety tips, foremost of which is to refuse any first meeting at home or in a secluded place, especially at night.
