LGBT+ associations are concerned about the increase in homophobic ambushes via dating applications dedicated to the community. Few victims dare to speak publicly. To raise awareness, several of them agreed to tell BFMTV.com about their attack.
Until then, Philippe* had always had reliable and problem-free encounters on Coco. Last September, this trader, aged 49, fell into a homophobic ambush organized via this dating platform, closed by the authorities since Tuesday June 24.
That day, the forty-year-old logs onto the site where he begins several discussions. “One of my interlocutors tells me that he is motivated to meet up and arranges to meet me in a village,” he explains to BFMTV.com. The meeting point is set “in a discreet location” in Saône-et-Loire, not far from Mâcon.
Philippe goes there. The man is waiting for him. But he is not alone. “Five guys” emerge from a cornfield located near the meeting place. “They had bats, sticks and a broomstick,” recalls the trader.
A reversal “to try to crush me”
Philippe was pinned to the ground and beaten up. “They picked my pockets and stole my car keys.” The forty-year-old got back up. Driving the stolen vehicle, his attackers “reversed to try to run him over.”
Philippe jumps into the ditch. “I thought they were going to finish me off,” he sighs.
A car arrives in the distance. The forty-year-old starts shouting to alert the driver. The vehicle does not stop. His attackers fled.
Barefoot, he walks about 200 meters to the first house. Disfigured, with a bloody face, he is taken care of by a resident who joins the emergency services. “I thought I was going to die,” confides Philippe, who was prescribed 15 days of total work interruption. A figure currently being reassessed.
“I also received homophobic insults,” reports Philippe. “I was called a dirty PD, I was also called a pedophile.” Since then, the forty-year-old has been undergoing therapy. “I will also have two dental implants in the coming days,” he confides.
A homophobic ambush every week?
Grindr, Coco, “Les pompeurs”… Dating sites and applications, particularly those aimed at the homosexual community, have been particularly criticized in recent months following a series of homophobic ambushes.
On Tuesday, May 28, BFMTV revealed the arrest, in several neighborhoods of Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), of nine minors suspected of having organized homophobic ambushes, via dating apps.
On the same day, the trial of three men, accused of having sequestered two men in their respective apartments, after making contact via a dating site, opened before the Paris Assize Court. “I fell into another world where I fell into a bottomless pit without knowing when it would stop,” said one of the victims, held for 60 hours at home. His tormentors were sentenced to prison terms of five to eight years.
These cases alone bear witness to the horror. However, the number of these attacks could be underestimated, according to certain associations defending LGBT+ rights. In a survey carried out in 2023, Mediapart estimated that a homophobic ambush took place every week in France.
“The figure is underestimated because it corresponds to complaints filed with the aggravating circumstance,” explains Maxime Haes, spokesperson for Stop Homophobia. “But there are plenty of complaints where it is not taken into account.”
Some victims, alone, sometimes uncomfortable with their sexual orientation, do not dare to enter the doors of a police station or take their aggression to court. Today, according to the figures from the various LGBT+ associations, “we can easily say that there is an ambush, perhaps, every day”.
Some victims speak out publicly. Luc di Gallo, deputy mayor of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), took up his pen to tell on X (formerly Twitter) the terrible attack of which he was the victim via Grindr, one of the most used applications in the LGBT+ community , in June.
On Grindr, Luc di Gallo thought he was talking with a potential partner. It was Friday June 2, 2023. During the afternoon, the deputy mayor logged in to the application for the first time. A discussion begins with a man, but nothing conclusive. The elected official from Montreuil relaunched Grindr in the evening. Contact with your interlocutor is more fluid. “I let myself go in the conversation and agreed to a meeting at the park,” he explains to BFMTV.com.
It’s around 11 p.m. Luc di Gallo thinks that the doors will probably be closed. If so, he will return. “When I arrive, the park is open,” he continues. Île-de-France then suffocates under the intense heat. The city therefore decided not to close the site to offer a little freshness to its citizens.
“I couldn’t breathe anymore”
“The place was reassuring. There were people, families,” recalls Luc di Gallo. The meeting point is set at a stadium where children are having fun. The chosen one sees his appointment. The man is wearing a surgical mask. “He tells me he’s allergic to pollen,” he remembers. Why not, says the chosen one who begins to follow him. “I ask him the question: ‘Are we going to your house?’”.
Two meters further, in a much darker space, three men emerge from behind a tree. The trap closes on Luc di Gallo.
“One of them grabs me by the neck and strangles me,” the elected official explains. “They hit me in the face.” Homophobic insults are hurled: “Dirty faggot or even pedophile.”
He tried to scream to warn the people in the park. One of the attackers then pinned him to the ground and pressed on his back. “I couldn’t breathe anymore,” the elected official confided. “They searched my things and then asked me for my code,” continued Luc di Gallo. “I started screaming again. They felt threatened and didn’t follow through.” The attack lasted about two minutes. “It was very violent. There was this feeling of not knowing what was going to happen.”
The attackers disappeared into thin air with his bank cards and his phone. They have not been arrested to date. “Psychologically, it was hard,” continues Luc di Gallo. “I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was the target of people who staged an attack.”
“These sites are a kind of jungle”
Back home, after filing a complaint, Luc di Gallo reconnects to Grindr: his attacker’s profile has disappeared.
“These dating sites are a kind of jungle. If I had known that this kind of attack existed, I would have been more careful,” thinks Luc di Gallo. The man he changed with did not have a profile picture on Grindr. “I don’t have one either because of my status as an elected official,” he notes. “We had exchanged photos.” Their conversation had not aroused suspicion either.
Today, the elected official has not given up on meetings. “Now I take the phone number,” he explains. “When we go into the jungle, we take some precautions.”
This digital “jungle” is teeming with LGBT+ sites and applications that very often come up in cases of homophobic ambushes. The phenomenon is not new, but “today, it is increasingly violent,” insists Terrence Khatchadourian, general secretary of Stop Homophobie. “We are seeing more and more rapes, extortions and almost attempted murders.”
“The ambush is easy to set up on the site Coco which is very widely diverted and not secure,” analyzed Jérôme Masegosa, president of the LGBT+ association Triangle Rose, based in Saint-Étienne, in a recent interview. He describes a vicious circle with this platform, due to the anonymity guaranteed to its users. “It is easier to access for victims who are not comfortable with their sexual orientation and the aggressors.”
Contacted by BFMTV.com, the platforms mentioned in this article did not respond to our requests. The associations are mobilizing their forces to obtain stricter regulations, or their closure. Coco is “a big, big problem for security, especially for minors,” said Jérôme Masegosa a few weeks ago.
On Tuesday June 25, the Paris prosecutor’s office finally announced the closure of Coco registered on the Channel Island of Guernsey and owned by a Bulgarian company. “The leaders of this mafia platform have been arrested,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin rejoiced on X (ex-Twitter).
While Sos homophobie welcomed a decision “that we have been asking for since 2023”, the association calls for vigilance: “The public authorities must fight against the development of similar sites.” A possible resurgence of the platform is already to be feared.
