Gay Man Beaten at Beach Forgives His Attackers : Port Hueneme: The victim, 54, tells court he ‘can’t afford to have that kind of anger’ at three sailors who kicked and hit him.

Two months ago, three sailors kicked and beat Richard Heffernan on a Port Hueneme beach because he is a homosexual. Most of the bones in his face were broken.

On Friday, Heffernan said he has forgiven his attackers.

“I want these three men and their families to know that I really do forgive them,” Heffernan told Ventura County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch. “I can’t afford to have that kind of anger in my life.”

The three men--Michael Breninger, 20, Kenneth Cummings, 19, and Sean McGeown, 18--pleaded guilty last month in the attack, which occurred while they were on weekend leave from the Naval Construction Battalion Training Center at Port Hueneme.

Investigators said the three men met Heffernan, 54, at an adult bookstore, asked him for a ride, stopped at the beach and then attacked him. Blinded by blood and sand, Heffernan managed to crawl to a parking lot where witnesses summoned help.

Heffernan’s comments Friday came at a crowded hearing where the men were to be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. Storch decided to postpone the sentencing, but he allowed the victim to address the court.

“This face you are looking at is all metal,” Heffernan told the judge, referring to the metal plates that surgeons used to rebuild his face during several weeks of hospitalization. As part of an operation to improve his vision, Heffernan said, doctors will have to graft bone from his hip onto his skull.

“I have accepted that,” he said. “I talk slower, I think slower, I walk slower.”

Heffernan made no sentencing recommendation. “I hope they get help. That’s my wish,” he said.

As Heffernan spoke, the defendants, who have been in custody since their arrest shortly after the May 19 attack, sat a few feet away at the defense table, eyes downcast. All three have received less than honorable discharges from the Navy, according to a probation officer’s report filed in court Friday.

Storch said that before he sentences the men, he wants to know more about “what makes them tick.” He said it would take about six weeks for them to be evaluated by the state Department of Corrections diagnostic center at Chino.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia M. Murphy said before the hearing that she will ask for state prison time rather than the maximum county jail term of one year. The probation officer who investigated the case also recommended that they be sentenced to the state prison system and serve their time at a California Youth Authority facility.

Murphy did not object to the sentencing delay. “It’s a difficult decision for the judge because of the youth of the defendants and the seriousness of the crime,” she said.

The men have been convicted of assault by means likely to commit great bodily injury, and of causing great bodily injury.

The probation report and other court records give this account of the attack:

The three sailors, who are from out of state and arrived in Ventura County only a few months earlier, went to Mr. K’s Plaza Marina Bookstore after they were refused service at a nearby bar. They entered the peep-show area and watched some videos. Heffernan, a theatrical agent who lives in Santa Barbara County, was there viewing a video. Breninger made small talk with Heffernan and told him they had some pornographic videos back at their motel room.

Breninger invited Heffernan to accompany them to the motel, but instead they stopped at the beach. Near the shore, Breninger suddenly put his arm around Heffernan’s shoulders while Cummings tackled him. While Breninger held the victim down, McGeown and Cummings kicked and beat him in the face and abdomen and shouted slurs about gays. Then they fled.

Breninger, who was traced through his registration at the motel, was arrested at the base May 20 and implicated the others.

In interviews with the probation investigator, the sailors all expressed remorse for the attack. Breninger said the three had been drinking and “just got caught up in the moment,” according to the investigator’s report. All three played a role in the beating and any of them could have stopped it, Breninger said.

“The victim did not deserve any of this,” Breninger said, according to the probation report.

Cummings told the investigator he wishes he could talk to Heffernan and say how sorry he is. He said he has nothing against gays, according to the report.

But all three men acknowledged that Heffernan was attacked because of his homosexuality. “The only reason is that he was gay,” McGeown told the investigator.

The motive for the attack still troubles him, Heffernan told the judge.

“That they would do this because I don’t think and act as they do--that will bother me for the rest of my life,” he said.