AN IRISH AUTHOR has described how he was the victim of a homophobic attack in Rathmines in Dublin less than two weeks ago.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Gavin McCrea described how he was harassed by two boys around 12-14 years old before a larger group of young teenagers gathered and attacked him. 

McCrea said the incident happened on Saturday 1 February after he had left the library in UCD when it closed at 5.30pm and had walked by the Dropping Well pub.

He had rung his uncle just prior to the incident. “I’m very glad I did so,” McCrea said. “My uncle became a witness to the attack, he overheard the whole thing.”

He said he walked past the two boys, who had begun shouting at him. When he ignored it, they started to throw stones and call him “f****t”.

“I told my uncle where I was, he said ‘you need to get out of there’,” he said. “I said they were only kids.”

McCrea said he didn’t run as he wasn’t particularly afraid, but then turned around and there were six of them, with a particular boy acting as the ringleader shouting homophobic abuse at him.

He told them to “go away” and then attempted to flag a car down which didn’t stop.

“They attacked me from behind,” he said. “They pushed me to the ground and kicked and punched me in the face.” 

As he was falling to the ground he said he shouted “call the police” into his phone and he believed that may have shortened the attack.

He suffered a fractured nose and cheekbone, and had “blood pumping from [his] face”. 

“I knew it was quite serious. I couldn’t use my phone because I had so much blood on my hands,” he said.

McCrea said: “People ask ‘how did they know I was gay?’ My response to that is: They didn’t.

The fact is may have seen something in my dress or the way I walked that put me into the “f****t box”. That had nothing to do with me. It’s what’s in their minds already before I walked into their lives. Why does it even occur to their minds to use that word when someone walks by them the street?

McCrea added that he’d gotten support from “amazing people with brilliant minds and open hearts” since the attack.

Gardaí are investigating the incident.