Confronter of Gay-Bashers Is Bruised but Unbowed : Violence: Beating victim says she will continue patrol work to discourage attacks on homosexuals.

Since last August, the 34-year-old Van Nuys woman has volunteered with a small group that regularly patrols the streets of West Hollywood in hopes of halting the rash of violence that has plagued the gay community.

Last weekend she became its latest victim.

Walking through West Hollywood Park, she heard two men yell an anti-gay remark at a man and then saw them beat him with a bottle. She told them to stop. Instead, they turned on her, one hitting her in the face with his fists and the other kicking her in the back as she tried to wrestle free.

Since the beating, her bruises have all but healed. And she has vowed to continue patrolling the streets of West Hollywood until the number of random attacks on gays--up 50% in 1991 in Los Angeles County from the year before--are no longer common.

“I’ve got to continue and be strong, because if I stop now it’s going to continue,” the woman said in an interview, which she agreed to on the condition of anonymity. “It’s a very sad and a very sick thing when you can’t even walk the streets and be safe. Not only as a gay person, but as a woman, because there’s so much rape these days. It’s just too scary.”

The woman, a supervisor in a Van Nuys firm that makes electronic displays for military and commercial purposes, has participated in the West Hollywood street patrol once a week since it began last August. Formed in response to an increase in gay-bashing incidents around gay bars and restaurants along Santa Monica Boulevard, the street patrol’s handful of members do not carry weapons and try to avoid violence.

But sometimes there is no escaping it.

Saturday night she had been at a West Hollywood coffee shop with friends. Afterwards, she was to go on patrol with others from the informal group, which now has only four active participants. She said the others did not show up at the usual rendezvous point near Santa Monica and Robertson boulevards.

About 1:15 a.m. Sunday she was walking back to her truck through the park when she saw two young men attack 29-year-old Brian Hardin. She shouted at them to stop. “Usually, when people think there’s someone watching, they’ll stop,” she said.

Instead, they knocked her to the ground, she said. Then, one of the men jumped on her and pummeled her face while the other kicked her. She said she fought back and landed a kick of her own.

“They probably were not expecting me to fight back,” she said.

While she struggled, Hardin ran for help. Others, possibly friends of her attackers, pulled them off.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, acting on a tip from a witness, later arrested Charles Pierson, 20, of West Hollywood and Albert Lattimer, 19, of Los Angeles.

The two men were charged in Los Angeles Municipal Court Tuesday with felonious assault, assault with a deadly weapon and committing a hate crime, according to court officials. Pierson is in custody at the Wayside Honor Rancho in Castaic and Lattimer is at the Los Angeles County Central Jail. They are each being held on $15,000 bail.

Lattimer and Pierson could not be reached for comment. The attorneys who will represent them in their trials have not yet been appointed by the public defender’s office. The men are due back in court March 16.

The woman said she would testify against those charged in the incident and that the reason she did not want to be identified was that she feared they or others might track her down and harm her.

“Most of the time, when gay people are bashed, not a whole lot is done about it, because people are afraid of coming out in public as gays and their co-workers or their families finding out,” she said. “If we could get treated fairly, we could prosecute all the way to the end.”

The woman said she has always gotten involved on behalf of people in trouble and that the best way to make the streets safe is for more people to become active in anti-crime efforts.

David Smith, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, said the woman is a hero.

“I haven’t let myself feel the anger or the sadness of what’s happened,” she said. “One day, I’ll probably cry.”