Is It Safe To Be Gay in The UK?

This programme contains very strong language, and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

# To your soul

# To your soul

# Cry... #

I can remember somebody mentioning something in relation to the word

"faggots". They heard that word, "faggots".

# You leave in the morning

# With everything you own in a little black case... #

I was going out with a group of friends.

We were just holding hands, walking...

And as I crossed the street...

A guy shouted behind us...

-"Faggot."

-"Poofter."

-"Gayboy."

-I turned around and challenged them on it.

Four guys got out of the car.

"Come out here, you batty boy."

# Mother will never understand why you had to leave... #

Then he literally swung for her.

Literally, just like that, boom.

Horrific injuries.

# The love that you need will never be found at home... #

I remember standing up for the first time.

Dain looked at me and said, "I can't see."

# Cry, boy, cry... #

The girl was then jumping on him.

She was on his chest and on his face and he didn't move.

Kicking and stamping.

And shouting, "Faggot, faggot," at him.

Every generation has to fight the same battles, and the battles,

the battles are never won.

It blows my mind that a mob would set upon anybody

because of their sexuality in Great Britain in 2017.

-INTERVIEWER: What were you like at school?

-Oh, you don't want to know.

Yeah, I was all right, though.

Yeah. I was all right.

Not too bad. But I got what needed to get done

and had fun at the same time, yeah.

Cos I used to do, like, music and stuff at school, obviously,

all rap and all that stuff.

Everyone used to treat me, like, boss.

It was a good time, it was a good time, yeah.

There was a reputation that I had,

a strong reputation in school that I had that I wanted to keep and I was

scared of losing it.

Probably the age of about 13, 14, I had my first boyfriend.

I didn't really feel different or, like, judged in school, I guess.

I guess I've grown up in a time

where our generation are probably just

more comfortable to be themselves, which is brilliant.

Coming out, I think that was a bit shocking to my parents but they kind

of accepted that. They accepted me for who I was, which was great.

Do you know what?

I regret not telling people sooner,

because I didn't have one bad comment,

I didn't have any awkward conversations,

anyone taking the mick.

I didn't have any of that, which is what I was scared of happening.

We met on one of these gay apps a few years ago,

but we just tell people we met on Facebook!

We met, er, on Grindr.

We just stayed up for ages, just talking.

Like, we hit it off really well on the kind of first time we met.

His eyebrows were so bad.

They were, like, massive.

He'll hate me for saying this, but he will agree with it.

But he was hot as well.

But, yeah...

We were just kind of besotted since day one, really.

Here we are now. Five years later.

INAUDIBLE

VOICEOVER: Bank holiday weekend, last year, in May,

we were out for my friend's birthday.

We were having a really good weekend.

It was bank holiday.

I was with Dain and a bunch of our mates in Brighton.

Summer was starting.

All the bars were open, all the clubs were open.

It was just a buzz, and that's what you love when you go out, obviously,

the buzz.

They're lovely together.

Literally, like, I feel embarrassed

going out with the two of them because they are just so beautiful.

When they're out together, you can see how much fun they have together.

They're always dancing, singing.

They're the first ones on the dance floor and the last ones to go home.

But the strange thing was, on that night,

they both had a feeling that something was going to go wrong.

Yeah, it was good, the atmosphere was good, really good.

We were having a great time.

I guess it was probably about three o'clock.

We were at the bar and just got this look from a couple of guys from

across the dance floor area.

It takes a lot to make me feel uncomfortable,

but it was just such a weird look that they gave us.

And my friend came up to me and said,

"Those two guys are looking at you really weirdly."

-But I just ignored it.

-Dain didn't see what I saw.

At this point, Dain had his arm round me,

but I think they didn't like that.

-At this point, they just started, like, shouting...

-"Fucking gayboy."

They said, "Oh, is that your fucking boyfriend?"

Dain realised, and I told him,

"The best being that we need to do is get out of this club,

"into a taxi, the quickest way possible."

Me and James just thought,

"We're just going to take ourselves out of that situation."

No-one was about.

All of a sudden, I hear running behind us.

I was kind of like, "Right, things just got real."

I could feel there's no way we were going to outrun them.

They just grabbed us from behind and just chucked us to the floor.

I mean, it was all, like, mayhem from there.

We were both on the ground.

I was laying on the pavement and all I could see was James,

but then the next thing I saw was just a shoe coming to my face.

That just knocked me completely unconscious.

One of the boys started kicking Dain's face,

like, really, really rapidly.

There was a lot of words and aggression, they were shouting.

They were shouting, like, "Gayboys."

Every time I tried to crawl closer to Dain,

he was literally dragging me along the pavement.

At that point, a taxi driver drove past

and I think he called the police straightaway.

And then, finally, the police got to us.

I remember standing up for the first time, and

Dain looked at me and said, "I can't see."

And it's when Dain said to me that he can't see, I thought,

"OK, this is bad."

I was going out with a group of friends.

Friday night, we were walking together in South London.

Me and my girlfriend at the time left the bar.

We were meeting some friends in Soho.

A bunch of teenagers who I walked past on my way home.

A car drove by, they leant out the window.

-"Bender."

-"Nancy boy."

"Nigger faggot."

"Did he just call us fucking lesbians?"

Why would you think that it was OK

to say something, when you can see that it's our wedding day?

I turned around and challenged them on it.

I said, "What did you say?"

He went, "You're a fucking lesbian."

I stepped in and asked for an apology.

I turned round to him and said, "You're a fucking idiot, go home."

"The only reason why you're giving me hate is because you're turned on

"by my arse and you can't even admit it to yourself."

Four guys got out of the car.

The door flung open.

And then they got out a chain.

"Come out here, you batty boy."

He just threw the beer all over us.

And then they hit me.

And just started hitting us with it.

And I got kicked in the face.

-And they just came for me.

-Punches to the head, punches to my face.

He just kept punching me to the side of my head.

He hit me a few more times.

They kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked...

Smashed my face onto the floor.

I had a scaffold pole smashed across my face.

All four of them, on the floor, stamping on my head.

And then everything went black.

I just saw two feet running in the distance.

My eye socket was completely shattered.

I had haemorrhages in both my eyes, I had fractures on my cheeks.

My eyes were completely red.

My tooth was chipped and my nose was broken as well,

at the top.

I remember being in hospital and I kept asking them,

"Am I going to be able to see again, am I going to be able to see again?"

And they said, "We can't tell you because everything is so swollen."

They couldn't even open my eyes, because it was just out here.

I remember, when he said that,

obviously when we walked out,

I just remember him squeezing

my hand, saying, "James,

"I'm not going to be able to see again."

I was like, "No, you will. Let's wait for it to heal and you will."

Me and James, at that point,

we were very close because we'd kind of gone through it together...

I mean, we were close in general anyway,

but just spending that much time with each other,

and we were actually there for each other,

and that kind of really proved it to me, how strong our relationship is.

I'm a very resilient person, and I don't want...

I'm not going to live my life how someone else wants to,

or whatever anyone else thinks, I'm me.

I have my own personality, as everyone else does,

and I'm not going to let anyone change that.

If anything, that's made me kind of want to be who I am even more so.

I think it's made him stronger.

And I think that it has made him not care about what other people think

and made him want to go out there and be himself even more.

Whereas it's done the opposite to me.

Like, it's changed the whole...

It's just changed...

to how I was before.

And it's sad because...

..I remember how we were before it happened...

..and I look at us now...

And it's upsetting because it's them who made this happen.

So that's what's hard to accept.

No, I wouldn't forgive them. No, plain and blunt, no, I wouldn't,

I couldn't ever. Like, it might get easier to accept it.

But I would never, like, forgive them or forget what happened.

Obviously it will stay with me, and I'm sure it will stay with them

for obviously the rest of their lives.

Angry.

Really angry.

And I'm starting to kind of doubt myself,

like, "What if her friends HADN'T been kissing at the time?"

I'm just angry with everything that happened since,

absolutely everything.

The fact that I had a black eye to explain to a six-year-old,

why Mummy was hurt, why Becky had bruises.

It's not something that I want to explain to my child,

that there's hate in this world,

and I had to, because of him.

What do you want to play?

Do you want to do hangman?

Yes. Let me get up here.

Go on, then. Careful.

Yeah, I'm nervous.

But at the same time, I want to know that he gets his comeuppance,

at the same time.

It's seeing him again, bringing up

those kind of memories again, isn't it?

I mean, we know that he lives close by, about 10, 15 minutes away.

So, what if he isn't found guilty and we're kind of stuck?

It's going to be really disappointing.

-No, that's what

-I

-was going to do!

VOICEOVER: It's just odd that it still happens.

And just because we chose to love each other.

I don't know. In this day and age, should we...

Like, we're a normal couple, aren't we?

-We're just normal.

-I don't know about normal, but, yeah...!

No, but we are. You know, we've got Josh.

-Who's normal, really?

-We've got Josh... We've got...

-Who's she?

-Becky, my stepmum.

INTERVIEWER: What's she like as a wife?

Hard work!

No, like, we have our good moments.

Like every other couple in the world, you know,

they've got their moments.

I didn't...

I'm the typical, like...

..like "man" lesbian, no?

The manly one. I don't know what you call them.

She thinks she is, but she's really, really girlie inside.

She's very, very girlie inside.

Actually, I've been... I told you that.

The little boy was talking to his mum, he went past,

and the boy said to his mum, "That's Josh's dad."

I just, I didn't say anything, actually.

Like, we never went out, ever, really.

For once, we had a baby-sitter,

and got out of the house, and that happened.

I mean, we haven't been out since, have we, Bec?

So, we're sitting down, um, a guy comes over.

And the first thing he says is, "Oh, I like lesbians."

Yeah! So, "Oh, God, not one of these," you know.

He had a South African accent.

All seemed quite pleasant.

He seemed quite tipsy, but I'm never really rude to anyone.

He asked them, our friends, to kiss.

To which they were like, "No."

And I'm like, "Sorry, mate, it's not just for you,

"your pleasure," kind of thing.

And then he said something which then offended one of my mates.

I think he said "dyke" or something.

Do you know what I mean? That's offence. You don't say that.

We just sort of got up and we were like, "Come on,

"let's just go to the kebab shop,"

because we were going to get a bit of food.

I didn't ever think that it was going to start getting violent.

The other guy that had joined in had then begun kind of circling us

as a group. And quite obviously stuck his attention in on me.

Then that's when he started getting a bit touchy-feely, groping, like,

her breasts, and...

Yeah, just literally, really hanging on her arm.

So I was just, like, trying to

just edge him away from me, kind of thing.

Then Becky was like, she'd had enough,

after he'd done it about eight, nine times, she'd had enough.

I don't think he liked that, to be honest.

And then he came forward, "Fat dykes," and all this.

Alex took offence.

Ran in front, just pushed him away from her.

The other guy saw her do it...

..and then he literally swung for her.

Literally, just like that, boom.

"I got groped, punched and slammed into a street light.

"My wife got punched and our two friends got punched, too.

"To hit a woman and to punch a woman is wrong, but to do that

"just because we didn't want them, disgusting and vile.

"I'm so angry that I've been violated for the love of my wife.

"I want this shared as I know hate crime is brushed under the carpet.

"Not this time." "Update. They have been arrested

"and are facing different five counts between them both.

"Justice will be served."

"Update two. CPS have come back and charged both of them.

"One is on remand and one has bail.

"Now just wait for a court date.

"I will be standing up in court 100%

"to fight this to the ground to make sure they will never do this again."

But, yeah, the next day, it was just cover it up

and smile and keep going.

I had to wear glasses.

I couldn't cover up the darkness around my eye.

Emotionally, it was...

It has a big impact on your relationship.

To not be able to be myself,

I felt imprisoned.

Do you stop holding hands when somebody approaches you?

If you don't hold hands, then the situation has already won.

Walking down the street with your boyfriend and you have to question

yourself, that's damage,

it's damaging to do that, to think that.

It makes you feel ashamed,

powerless.

They're kind of, they're dehumanising you a little bit.

You know before you even know you're gay that it's not...

it's not going to be an easy ride.

You think you will always be discriminated against.

Everybody will hate you for who you really are.

You have no reference point whatsoever.

You did not decide for yourself who you love.

It's a bit graphic but I used to force myself to masturbate over

Page 3 girls because I did not want to be this person.

That's how powerful the heteronormative society is.

Society in general doesn't know how to deal with people who do not fit

into one category or another.

The assumption, I think, is always that people are straight.

When I was kind of like working in offices,

I would not bring up the fact that

I was gay.

I think every gay, queer, bisexual person, people of colour,

anyone who has a difference to the WASPy white norm knows all of these

subtle differences.

Some people take a second glance and think, oh, you know,

"Is she in the right toilet?"

I started to change the way I dressed to look more straight.

Are you that ignorant you can't see that I'm a girl or are you saying it

because you are trying to make a point of it?

You're equalising your way through, you're turning knobs,

you're revealing bits, you are putting stuff away.

Day-to-day familiar violence that you experience,

aggressively pushing past somebody or calling somebody a batty boy

on the street, that's the crux,

that's the thing that we actually need to be tackling

because that is what feeds the bigger stuff.

"I can change you." That's the typical phrase.

I can change you. Change me?

What? Change my mind?

You're never going to change my mind because I fought so hard to be

the person that I am and to accept the person I am.

I mean, come on, what logic or sense is that?

It just breaks my heart.

Tell me what it's like being gay in Margate?

Horrendous.

I get so many people, like, saying to me, "Oh, you're gay,

"you should be dead." And everything like that.

It's horrible.

A lot of people obviously used to give me a lot of stick

for being gay. Like, all the way through school,

everyone used to pick on me and bully me for being, well,

I hadn't come out as gay then but, yeah, for being gay.

No, he was a lovely little lad.

Really chubby, really lovely.

Full of mischief, which he still is to a certain extent,

but he's not had it easy, bless him.

The nearest he ever got to having a mum and dad was me and his grandad.

My nan, I know she's always there for me whenever I need her.

She's amazing.

She always looks after me and she always tries her best for me.

I think he was about 15, 16 when he came out.

As I say, we knew he was gay.

I thought, "He'll come out when he's ready.

"He'll tell me in his own time."

Nobody has to live a lie these days.

Abbie, my best friend, told me about a room going spare,

up above her flat.

It was just like a double-sized room, really.

There was two bedrooms in the flat.

The guy, Joseph, had his own bedroom which had a lock on it

and I had a bedroom as well, but I think my lock was broken.

Joseph Olusegun Williams is the name.

Mr Williams was born in Nigeria, lived in Croydon.

He came from a fairly strict Catholic background.

Connor moving into his flat was sort of forced upon him by the landlord.

I'd met him a few times before I moved in there.

He thought I was a girl, first of all,

because I did kind of have hair down to my shoulder and it was bright red

and I wore make-up all the time.

Abbie's boyfriend said that I weren't a girl,

that I was gay and that I was a boy.

He came to see me on the Saturday, as he moved in on the Sunday.

And he said to me, "I'll ring you in the morning, Nan."

The flat, it was absolutely disgusting.

There was broken eggshells everywhere.

Vile.

There were skid marks all around the bowl on the inside

cos he lived like a tramp.

So my friends came down from Faversham to help me clean the flat.

Took six hours to clean, pretty much.

And then they got the last train back to Faversham.

And then I walked back to the flat on Athelstan Road.

And then I had a cigarette with Abbie downstairs

before going upstairs.

I was meant to watch this whole film and I obviously fell asleep.

I was sleeping on a blow-up mattress.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in hospital.

We know that Mr Williams got home

around about five o'clock in the morning, from phone records.

We know that about 10.30 was the phone call to the police,

from Williams, to say that he thought

that there was somebody in his flat who was dead.

I was working with my crewmate, Tor,

on the day and we were already out

in the ambulance.

When we arrived, there were three other police officers there.

They were let into the flat by Williams.

He was calm and compliant.

The officers then searched the flat and found Connor on the airbed.

Connor was lying on the floor and he...

he had been attacked with a hammer

which was still embedded in his head.

The flat end,

the end you'd use to bang nails in normally

was actually all the way into Connor's head.

I've always wanted to go in a helicopter.

The one time I was in a helicopter, basically dead.

Abbie phoned me. "Has the police been in touch with you?"

I thought, "Oh, shit, what's he up to now?"

The surgeon said to me, "Be prepared...

"..he's in a mess."

I've never seen anything so bad.

And, um... Sorry.

We went into the ward.

I didn't even recognise him.

I don't know what I thought.

I honestly thought he was going to die.

Because he was in such a state. Bless his heart.

They had to cut a quarter of the skull out of my head

to relieve the pressure on my brain,

and I had a blood clot as well.

I couldn't walk, I couldn't talk, I couldn't eat.

I had to learn to do all of that again so it was like...

..being a newborn baby.

I've got...

Well, I've still got a dent in my head now.

I've got epilepsy but there's also a bit of, um,

bone from my skull that pokes through my skin and gives me, like,

a really bad migraine.

But I can't run, I can't use my right hand

and I've got to take tablets

every single day for the rest of my life.

I do suffer with, like, memory loss now.

And my depression is coming back as well.

Great.

-REPORTER:

-He'd been asleep in bed after his first night

in the new flat, when Williams, who already lived there,

struck him so hard with a claw hammer,

it became embedded in his skull.

No motive was established but Mr Huntley was openly gay

and Williams had previously made disparaging remarks

about gay people.

Certainly for Kent Police,

the perception of a hate crime is down to the victim.

If the person on the receiving end

of any type of crime perceives it to be based on their diversity

or their religious view or their sexuality,

then that's how we would treat it.

Williams' defence had been that he'd had a psychotic episode

and while he did suffer with mental illness,

the jury agreed that he'd known what he was doing when he attacked

his flatmate.

Why do you think he did what he did?

Because it's against his religion for me to be gay.

But it, like, I don't know why, but when I sit there,

it makes me sad for what he done to me.

It's always constantly in the back of my head, obviously.

I just think he's vile.

And whatever he done to me, I want to do to him,

but a million times worse.

But I also want the answer of why he done it,

because he's never told anyone why he's done it.

Have I ever tried to put myself in the mind of a homophobe?

Yes.

Gone are the days of the thug with the skinhead and the tattoos.

Perpetrators now that we are finding are well-dressed,

well-educated people.

There must be some thought process which leads them to the decision

that it's OK to hit this person.

People think I'm a joke,

that queer people are disposable and that queer people can have this

violence against them because they don't do anything.

The unifying factor is that it's always men.

White men. All ages. Usually in groups.

I do think it was interesting that it was a group of people who did it.

I think straight men kick off at gay men because they know what

men are like. They're men.

We're men. We are exactly the same.

They do seem to be quite obsessed with our sex lives!

There's a moment when, usually a man, because it is usually a man,

is attracted to that person that they're seeing

and they're so repulsed by

the attraction that they have, they have to react to it.

Jealousy.

Envy!

Fear of difference, fear of sex.

Well, I think it's fair enough.

I mean, sex is repulsive, isn't it, really?

At least it should be, if you're doing it right.

If you think about it!

Deep down, they don't agree with it.

They think there's something wrong with it.

Because you don't know LGBT people, that's why you have a fear of them.

I think it's a lot to do with misogyny.

A hatred of women and feminine people.

I think it starts with your parents.

The messages you get from your siblings, your friends, your family.

It's been indoctrinated within them.

It destabilises their idea of what it is to be a man or a woman.

A threat to their masculinity.

A worry about the strength of your own position.

They automatically think they've got more power.

And it is a power game to some people.

There is an element of fear at the root of it.

There is an institutional homophobia which still runs through.

Having a house and a family and two kids,

that was just a whole economic ruse.

Trans people, queer people, non-binary.

We're an assault. We're different.

That's very threatening.

These here, it depicts seeing the light coming towards you

of the cars and the number of cars

that there were on the road that night.

The squares themselves depict trouble,

and these spots are the spots where

things haven't gone quite right.

And this is really about the disaster

and the effect that it had at the end. It does -

it sort of symbolises Ian,

and what happened to him but it's also something that is very nice and

reassuring to have around.

But, yeah, that twist of fate.

And you can just about pick him out, Ian Baynham.

That's also very special.

Well, that night...

..he was walking down the street with his friend, Philip.

He'd just had his first week at work, so he was going out

to have a drink.

They'd just alighted from a bus,

when Ian was, um, verbally abused, basically, I'd say.

Something was said to him in relation to his sexuality -

or his presumed sexuality.

The word "faggots" - they heard that word, "faggots".

Ian turned round to speak to the person.

They shouted out...

.."Fucking faggots".

My brother turned round and said, "I may be gay, but..."

Ian was not the sort of person who would let a comment pass.

You know, he wasn't ashamed of who or what he was,

in any shape or form.

If you were going to call him something, you would get a response.

And then, there was some sort of altercation that went on.

There was a short tussle.

The blonde girl was hitting Ian Baynham

with her handbag, and Ian managed to grab hold of it.

I turned the corner and saw the young girl

sort of struggling with the older guy,

though it looked like he was trying to take her handbag.

The girl just seemed angry.

They just seemed like pissed off, drunk, young, angry girls.

One of the witnesses said that he was kicked in the groin.

At which case, he flailed out at the girl.

At that point, Joel

threw the punch.

Ian, he was the first-born in the family.

And he was four years older than I was.

He always... He was...

He had this amazing smile.

He just loved life, really.

When things were tough,

he'd be there, and he'd never judge you.

As we grew up,

um, we went our separate ways.

In our early 20s, I went to a gay party with somebody, a girl.

It was packed.

I looked across the room

and I thought, "It can't be!

"That's Ian."

He spotted me, I could see, cos there were people in the middle.

It was absolutely crowded.

And he came up to me, put his arms around me...

..and he said, "What are YOU doing here?"

And from that moment, we realised that, you know, we were both gay.

That really forged this inseparable link.

My memory of it was like

a combination of, like, a running kick-punch.

Ian was punched to the ground by another member of that same group.

I saw that and thought, "That looks a bit excessive."

According to Philip Brown, Ian fell to the ground like a corpse.

As soon as he'd hit the ground, he was out.

The girl was reported by many witnesses

to start kicking and stamping and

shouting, "Fucking faggot," at him.

The girl was then jumping on him.

She was on his chest and on his face, and he didn't move.

And it was at that point I called the police.

Kicking him

while he was laying on the ground,

with blood coming from his ears and his nose.

Exactly where he'd fallen.

You know, shocking.

Absolutely shocking.

Um...I... When I heard it, I couldn't believe it.

And there was a crowd of people round him,

which you can see on the CCTV footage.

How could you leave somebody in that state?

Why didn't they go back to him,

check he was OK? Those questions still nag at the back of my mind.

To walk away...

How could you do that?

She seemed to be pretty pleased about what she'd been involved in.

She had her arms raised.

She seemed to have a smile on her face.

Others were there.

Maybe a little less exuberant.

But nevertheless, they all knew what had happened.

They left the scene, you know, they left the scene.

They left

Ian in that state.

I got there and went in to see him and he was in intensive care.

He was unconscious.

He'd got two big black eyes.

I looked at him and I thought...

..you know, "How can he survive this?"

When you say someone's been punched and they're unconscious, then you...

I suppose you have an idea in your mind what you're going to see when

you get to the hospital. You're just hoping that...

..you know, things aren't quite as horrific as they sound.

I said, "George, his breathing is changing."

And my experience told me that, you know,

this was sort of the final breath and...

And he struggled a bit with his breathing and...

and then he stopped breathing.

We were with him...

It was very sad.

And so he died.

-APPLAUSE

-Ladies and gentlemen,

I wanted her to come up on the stage and just see for herself.

Would you please welcome Ian Baynham's sister, Jenny.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

VOICEOVER: Extraordinary coming together of gay people,

straight people, just because of what had happened.

There were thousands, and they had lights, they were twinkling.

It was magic, really.

And such a fitting event for Ian, really.

And just across the road was where he was last conscious.

I went there a couple of times just to have a look.

You know, it really is significant, and...

Yeah. That tree, I know it very well.

He is part of Trafalgar Square now and...where it all happened.

-REPORTER:

-A former public school girl and her male friend have been

found guilty of the manslaughter of a man

who was killed in a homophobic attack in Trafalgar Square.

18-year-old Ruby Thomas and 20-year-old Joel Alexander

will be sentenced in January.

Guilty of carrying out a brutal homophobic killing,

during a drunken night out in Trafalgar Square in September

last year, 18-year-old Ruby Thomas and 19-year-old Joel Alexander,

friends from south London.

One witness compared their actions to a scene

from the ultraviolent film, A Clockwork Orange.

They will have to live with what they've done

for the rest of their lives.

I hope that they will continue to think about what they've done.

Because that's perhaps a greater punishment than, you know,

being locked away for a couple of years.

The lasting effect to me of something like this,

you'll see something in the street one day,

and you'll laugh about it and you'll think,

what pleasure he would've taken in it.

You've had a good friend that you can share things with,

and they are taken away for no valid reason.

Someone perceived that they were gay

and that was something that they felt they should comment on.

It's been a really tough week for us.

I haven't slept right in, like, five, six days,

because I've just been worrying about everything

and just so angry and worked up about it.

The defence changed everything around -

to then say that it never happened,

you're calling me a liar.

I've no reason to lie. I don't know this man from Adam.

It wasn't nice.

It hit me and I just...

Yeah, as soon as I came out of the courtroom, I broke down.

It was nothing like what I thought it would be.

Nothing like it at all.

He got told that he was guilty, even though he wasn't there.

But unless he returns to the country, he will not be sentenced.

It's difficult.

But, yeah, annoyed that he didn't attend and get sentenced.

How one guy can, you know,

be found guilty and then the other guy not guilty,

and they were both there at the same time, it's...

It doesn't make sense.

It's a lot easier for me.

Alex, it's going to be a little bit harder.

She holds it in a lot, you know, personal, and all that.

We know what happened.

We haven't lied.

And now we have to live with it.

It's easier said than done.

Easier said than done.

What's happening today, Bec?

I'm going to hell.

-INTERVIEWER: What's happening today?

-I'm going to...

-Notinam!

-Nottingham!

-NottingHAM!

You're being silly. Stop.

-Nottingham.

-You're going to Nottingham.

Not exactly specifically a fresh start,

but it's just a new life for all of us.

Now I feel guilty, because I've chosen to love Becky,

which, in turn, has brought this crap into Josh's life.

Just me and my son...

..we look completely normal.

We wouldn't gather attention, and being with Becky gathers attention,

cos she is so obviously gay.

I'm disappointed and upset and angry

at him and the court and the justice system and...

..just hope and pray that it doesn't happen to someone else.

We're a year on now since it happened and I thought that...

I think I thought that things would probably get a bit easier,

but they haven't.

When we're out and about, he wants us to look like we're together,

obviously, but I'm scared of someone taking the wrong look,

or it happening again, something similar.

It wasn't like that a year ago.

Yeah, we didn't go down the street holding hands

but I wasn't... I wasn't, like, fully aware of us

making sure that we weren't seen as a couple.

Right, we don't need a hair dryer, do we?

No. I don't think you can bring your laptop,

-if you were planning on doing that.

-Why can't I bring my laptop?

Because you can't bring stuff on the plane any more.

-INTERVIEWER:

-None of those summer shirts going? Look at those.

Oh, right. That was... That was the old days.

No more of that. More of this, though.

We used to share clothes, and it was quite handy,

but now James just wears tracksuits all the time.

There's nothing wrong with that.

No, there's not, but obviously I don't see that sort of thing.

Yeah, and you used to have glitter parties and wear pink everywhere.

And now you just want to dress like a chav.

But you say it like there's something wrong with it.

No, but it annoys me, like, obviously.

-Why does it annoy you?

-Because you're not the same person any more.

You're like this completely different person.

VOICEOVER: I think we've both...

I don't know, changed a lot in that last year, I'd say.

Yeah, we've definitely changed into different people because of what

happened, and some of it for the best, some of it's...

I wouldn't necessarily say from what happened.

I would say from what happened, from like the mental side of it,

the way that our thought processes...

OK, yeah. But I still...

I don't... I don't... I'm not ashamed to be gay like you, like.

-I'm not ashamed.

-Yeah, you are.

I'm not ashamed. I wouldn't say it's ashamed.

I haven't said those words like that.

No, you said, "Oh, I don't want people to know I'm gay."

That means you're ashamed of being gay.

-No, I didn't say that.

-You did. You've said that to me before.

-I think you've got the wrong end of the stick.

-I don't think I have.

-I said I need to be careful.

-You don't need to be careful

-of who you are.

-Of course I need to be careful.

-Because of what happened.

-Not really. Bullshit,

absolute bullshit. I don't agree with that.

You're full of shit.

VOICEOVER: For me, it's really sad, because I've seen him change into

someone that I don't really recognise any more.

And it's really upsetting for me.

But I have to be wary, cos I don't want what happened...

It's not going to happen. Well, how is that going to happen again?

Cos... How did it happen THAT night?

Because we were being, like, you know...

We were being people. We were being humans.

Yeah, we were being ourselves. Which was quite flamboyant.

There's nothing wrong with being ourselves.

-Not at all. We are who we are.

-I know, but we have to be wary.

-No, we don't. Not at all. We don't.

-We do.

I've changed my thought process and mind-set of everything

than how it was before.

Of how I think about how I look, how I act, how I speak,

who I'm with, where we go,

where I'm seen, everything.

I think it's a terrible thing that happened to us

and I would honestly not wish that to happen to anyone.

So much bad has come out of it, I guess, in terms of

physically and mentally for both of us.

We're going to have to see what happens.

I miss the smiles, the cuddles.

I miss my old Connor.

As I say, at the end of the day, he's still my grandson.

He's a little bugger at times, I know, but he is a good kid, really.

He's strong, he's a good person.

He's not the bad person.

It was like literally love at first sight as soon as I met him.

I didn't want to let go when I gave him a cuddle.

Oh, I've got my best friends, the person that I love, just everything,

really. Everything I've ever wanted...

..out of a relationship.

What's the future for you, guys?

Spend the rest of our lives together.

Getting married next year.

He wants it all like a royal wedding.

Like, he wants a red carpet, all the bling and glitter, and...

-Not something

-I

-would want, but...

-And the butterflies!

-Maybe not that.

-Butterflies as the table decorations.

-Maybe not.

-Yeah.

It's been 50 years since we've achieved equality and yet,

in reality, we haven't really achieved equality.

We've just achieved some legal sanction.

I am a gay man but I'm not ONLY a gay man.

Until we can be seen to be knitted within families and knitted within

communities, we'll continue to be pigeonholed in the way that we are.

We... We... We are who we are,

and if you think you're normal...

I think I'm normal,

what is normality?

We've been having this discussion for a very long time.

But it's...what's the new norm.

The only way that things will improve is to be visible

and just stand up for ourselves, you know?

Education, education, education.

You have to be exposed, you have to be exposed to that culture.

Changing the young people will, in a couple of generations, make a huge

-difference.

-It's possible in our generation as well.

If we live long enough.

-Yeah.

-My goal for my liberation at the moment is to, like,

not have a fear of being violently attacked.

That's not really like a high goal, right?

It's rather bleak, isn't it?

Sorry.

It's not OK for somebody to shout "faggot", or "gay boy", or whatever.

When we walk away, they've got away with it.

It's the gay community getting the confidence to come forward and

report these crimes.

I think that's one of the biggest things for the police is

wanting people to report things so we can do something about it.

We will definitely get there.

We have a saying - keep on keeping on, because we will get there.

Who cares why they do it?

Stop, just stop.

Deal with it yourself.

You know, it's not OUR job to train you up. You know?

I hate to think about him, because then that sets me on a roll.

We always used to say, "Oh, well, look,

"we can always live together when we get older and get retired, you know,

"we'll be like Darby and Joan and, you know,

"have a few tea parties and this..."

And we'd laugh about it and so...

..I probably miss him more and more as I've got older.

You can't...

You can't have hate.

You can't have hate.

And I think hate is a very...

..divisive thing to hold on to.

I don't want to be like that and I've never been like that.

I'm starting the restorative justice programme

and hoping that...

..that'll give me some sort of closure

and also, that that will help the offenders.

I'd like to meet them all.

They're still alive and they have a life.

I do care what happens to people.

And I know that some people don't have the same advantages as others.

I actually think he would

support me doing this.

And I think this will really be a bit like a springboard in helping me

move on.

I'm hopeful.