Victim of ‘Gay Bashing’ in Laguna Fearful, Tormented

As he was leaving a gay bar for a breath of fresh air one night last June, Carl remembers, he “just had a feeling” that he was walking into trouble.

His premonition proved to be well-founded. He and a casual acquaintance had been out of the Laguna Beach bar only 10 minutes, he said, when they were set upon by at least two men, swinging pipe-like objects and shouting: “Faggots! I’m gonna kill you!”

After three long minutes, the melee was over. Carl said he managed to drag himself up the stairs from the beach where they were confronted. His friend, wiry and with a small build, was able to slip free after taking only a few bruising blows. But Carl was more seriously injured.

Stumbling back into the Little Shrimp bar afterward, Carl’s face was a pulverized mess and his new pink shirt had turned crimson with blood. At the South Coast Medical Center, where he was taken for treatment, a doctor told him he had lost six front teeth and would never see again out of his left eye.

Wearing a black eye patch and reclining in the living room of his comfortable, inland Orange County condominium, Carl, 42, who asked that his real name not be used to protect his school-age children from embarrassment, recounted what it was like to experience one of the “gay bashings” that have plagued the homosexual cruising grounds of Laguna Beach this summer.

“I have nightmares every night of what happened,” said Carl, nervously chain-smoking cigarettes Friday as he recalled the beating. “It was a miracle that I wasn’t killed. There’s no doubt in my mind that they wanted to do that.”

There have been no arrests in connection with June 18 attack on Carl, Laguna Beach police said.

A second gay bashing occurred July 14 in Laguna’s Heisler Park, where three young men described by police as Skinheads bludgeoned a Los Angeles man with a pipe so severely that he required 80 stitches to close a head wound. Three men from Huntington Beach have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon in that attack and are awaiting trial.

A third attack, also in Heisler Park, occurred July 31, when three youths beat a lone transient and fired guns into the air before fleeing. Those suspects have not been apprehended.

A fourth incident was reported Sunday, when rifle shots were fired from across Coast Highway to where the Little Shrimp and other gay businesses are situated. No one was injured in the shooting, and police said they have no suspects.

The outbreak of violence has prompted Laguna Beach officials to meet with gay community leaders over the past three weeks to address the problem. The City Council is set to discuss the rise in gay-bashing incidents at its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, and is to consider, among other things, deploying more officers to patrol the area.

Blames City of Laguna

Carl said he blames the City of Laguna Beach, in part, for his assault because no signs were posted at the beach entrance warning that gays are sometimes singled out for attack. He also cites Orange County’s reputation for conservatism, in general, which he contends fosters prejudice and hostility against gays and other minority groups.

“There are a lot of right-wing, sick people. And I hate to say it, but a lot of them live in Orange County,” Carl said.

Carl said he moved to Orange County 14 months ago from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a marketing-sales executive at an Irvine corporation and is a single parent raising a 15-year-old high school student.

Unaware that attacks on gays had taken place in Laguna Beach’s homosexual community, Carl said, he thought nothing of driving down to the Little Shrimp on the night of June 18 to meet friends. Having just quit smoking two weeks earlier, he said, he and an acquaintance that night decided to step out to get away from all the smoke inside the bar.

Carl remembers hesitating, however, when the friend suggested that they take a walk down to a nearby beach.

“I said, ‘I just don’t feel safe.’ It was just a feeling I had,” he recalled. “I should have listened to my instinct.”

The two men went to the beach anyway, Carl said, and spent about 10 minutes walking around. They decided to leave, though, after one of the men who would soon attack them approached to ask for a cigarette. Carl said the man was stocky and about 6 feet, 2 inches tall.

“There was something in his eyes that was menacing,” Carl said. “After I told him I didn’t have a cigarette, I said to my friend, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ ”

But Carl and his friend got only part way up the stairs leading back from the beach, he said, when “all of a sudden these guys started screaming ‘Faggot!’ and going at my face with a pipe or the back of a gun. I never felt anything so horrible.”

Carl remembers bristling when, in the hospital emergency room a short time later, the doctor’s first question was whether he had tested positive for AIDS. Carl angrily told the doctor he had not.

“The extreme homophobia in people is so bad that even doctors are scared,” he said.

Life Not the Same

After spending a week in the hospital, Carl was released. He returned home to find that his life would never be the same.

Being blind in one eye meant extreme difficulty in driving--especially at night, when he now has virtually no depth perception. Since his office is only eight minutes away from home, he said, he still drives himself to work. But that is the only place he goes.

Even walking is sometimes a problem. A few weeks ago, for example, Carl said, he walked into a glass door while trying to find the restroom in a Costa Mesa hotel.

“If I drop a lighter or a pen behind me, I cannot see it,” he added.

Carl suffers from other physical problems as a result of the attack. He has afternoon headaches so severe that he must lie down for relief. He said he also needs about $5,000 in dental work to repair his badly injured bridgework. His medical insurance is paying for some of the medical bills, and he intends to file a lawsuit against the city of Laguna Beach to seek additional compensation.

Psychologically, he is tormented by the fear that his child may be subjected to taunts of high school classmates who might learn his identity.

Even in sleep there is little relief. Carl said he awakens in a cold sweat almost every night from the nightmares in which he relives the attack.

Still, Carl does not ask revenge against his assailants. A lifelong pacifist who protested against the Vietnam War, he said he wants only that his attackers spend time in an AIDS clinic so they could learn firsthand of the torment that gays must now endure. Then, he said, they might be more understanding and sympathetic.