Horrific bashings of five men at the hands of teenagers 'targeting' gay people detailed in court
Horrific details of brutal assaults inflicted by a group of teenagers on men they lured to secluded suburban areas with the promise of sex have been aired in the Perth Children's Court, including victims being stripped, tasered, filmed and chased into traffic.
WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.
Five boys have admitted viciously bashing and robbing men they met in Perth using a fake profile on social media dating app Grindr to arrange meetings at night for sex.
But when the men arrived, they were attacked by the teenagers who were armed with a variety of weapons including a knife, machete, a metal bar, pepper spray and a taser.
One man was stripped naked, threatened with drowning and chased into a swamp after being punched in the face and tasered, losing teeth in the process, the court heard.
Grindr is a dating and meeting online app predominantly used by gay and bisexual men and the trans and queer community.
It uses your device's GPS to locate other users nearby and displays their profile pictures in a grid, ordered by their distance from you.
Source: eSafety Commissioner
His wallet was stolen and the teens tried to force him to confess to being a paedophile on video, but he refused.
A knife or machete was held to the victim's throat before he was taunted and chased naked into a nearby swamp.
After hiding in reeds he eventually emerged and passed out on the swamp shore before coming to and seeking help.
Naked photographs of him were subsequently distributed on social media by one of the boys.
In another case, the boys arranged to meet a man in the southern Perth suburb of Hamilton Hill, but when he arrived, he was confronted by up to eight teens wearing ski masks and hoodies, one wielding a kitchen knife.
His car windscreen was smashed with boulders and his next memory was of finding himself in a house with an older couple, bleeding from the head and with "blood all over his clothes".
In the southern Perth suburb of South Lake, another man was chased by the teens and hit in the back of his head "with something hard", the court was told.
The victim ran towards a road and was clipped by a vehicle, before the boys grabbed him and took him to some nearby trees and hit on the head again.
The prosecutor said the victim "had no memory of the next half an hour", but a video recording seized showed the man being assaulted as he was lying on his back and trying to speak.
A taser was held to the man's genitals, but not discharged.
The victim's next memory was being in a service station, without his wallet and phone.
A further was assaulted in South Lake after he found himself surrounded by a group of men, with one brandishing a machete.
Two of the boys stole his car while the others chased him, pulled to the ground and kicked him all over his body and neck.
In another incident, rocks were thrown at a victim's car after he arrived at a South Lake address where he thought he was going to meet with someone.
But he was able to lock his doors and stay in the car when he spotted a group of males approaching, who then pelted his car with rocks.
The five boys in court on Wednesday were aged 16 and 17 at the time of the crimes, while the victims were aged from their late teens to mid-thirties.
Much of the evidence had come from phone recordings.
The prosecutor said a member of the public had made a report to police, after seeing a video on a boy's Instagram account, showing a male being tasered on the penis.
One of the boy's lawyers, told the court his client had wanted to target paedophiles, describing the motivation as "misguided".
Another boy's lawyer said her client was told it was about targeting paedophiles and not homosexual men.
But Judge Wendy Hughes said no form of vigilantism could be accepted in the community.
She said they'd targeted "gay people who are lawfully going about their business".
The five boys are set to be sentenced this afternoon.
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