56-Year-Old Vancouver Man Found Guilty Of Sexual Assault On 15-Year-Old Teen Who Lied About Age Despite Fact Sex Was Consensual, Endemic Homophobic Crime Plagues United Kingdom Prisons, 24-Year-Old Edinburgh Gay Male Jaw Is Broken In Homophobic Attack, 26-Year-Old Sentenced To Life After Fatally Stabbing Gay Friend Then Trying To Burn Body

A 56-year-old Vancouver, British Columbia man will serve two years probation and be placed on the sex offender registry for 20 years after having sex with a 15 year-old North Vancouver boy he found through the online networking app Grindr. The North Shore News reports that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gregory Bowden handed Gordon Brent Tynan a suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to sexual assault of the boy in 2010. Tynan met the teen for sex three times between August 2009 and April 2010, after the two arranged a rendezvous using the iPhone application Grindr. Users are supposed to be at least 17 to sign up for Grindr, but the teen lied about his age when he registered. However, he told Tynan his real age before their last sexual encounter. The incidents were discovered when the teen invited Tynan back to his North Vancouver home and the teen's mother walked in to find Tynan naked in a bathroom. Both Crown counsel Mike Mahoney and Tynan's defence lawyer agreed the sex was consensual, but because the boy was only 15, he could not legally consent. The government raised the age of consent to 16 from 14 in 2009. When Tynan was arrested in April 2010, police issued a warning to parents to be aware of whom their kids are talking to online.

Homophobic crime is endemic in Britain's prisons, but often ignored by the authorities, according to an investigation that has revealed allegations of verbal, physical and sexual assaults. According to The Independent,the report by the Howard League for Penal Reform shines a light on the last taboo in Britain's prison system, and the fact that homophobic incidents are not nationally monitored. The targeting of gay men for sexual favours is also widespread, according to victims who say they are too scared to report abuse in case they are mocked or ignored by staff. The Howard League found that sending prisoners to vulnerable persons' units for their "own protection", along with child abusers and informants, fuelled dangerous, false stereotypes about homosexuality. One bisexual man told the League, "I've been put in segregation and slashed down my back with a razor. They say if I go into the shower they will beat me up and some ask for sexual favours. We can't report it, as we're then labelled as a grass and that leads to abuse." The research comes as the prison service takes steps to stamp out hate crimes related to race, religion and disability to comply with equality laws that come into force next April. The Howard League found some examples of good local practice and individual prison officers who tried to ensure that all vulnerable prisoners were protected from discrimination. But inspectors this year highlighted the lack of policies and support available to protect gay and bisexual inmates at several prisons. The Warren Hill young offenders' institute in Suffolk, Wayland category C prison in Norfolk, and Askham Grange women's prison in Yorkshire are among those that must urgently improve support for gay inmates, according to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons. Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League, said an unofficial "don't ask, don't tell" policy made it impossible to establish the true extent of homophobic assaults. "Anecdotally, we know there is endemic homophobia directed at gay prisoners from staff and other inmates," she said. "We have been told that the weak and vulnerable are targeted for the purchase of sexual favours or [their] exchange for canteen items, drugs or protection. The charity has been told that gay prisoners are advised by officers to 'act less gay' as a survival strategy. The prison population is 88,115 in England and Wales, with 5,000 gay and bisexual inmates, charity Stonewall estimates.

Police are treating an attack in Edinburgh which left a man with a broken jaw as a homophobic assault. STV reports that the 24-year-old victim was one of a group of friends who were confronted by three men on Waverley Bridge just after midnight on Sunday morning. The men shouted homophobic abuse at the group before punching the victim in the face, knocking him to the ground, and running off towards Princes Street. Lothian and Borders Police said the assault was "cowardly and vicious" and appealed for witnesses to come forward. A spokesperson for the force said, "Due to the comments made prior to the attack, officers are treating this as homophobic. Lothian and Borders Police will not tolerate hate crime in any form and will robustly deal with anyone found to be responsible." One of the suspects is described as black, in his early twenties, 5ft 6ins tall and of medium build. He was wearing a black hooded top, black and yellow scarf and black trousers. The other two men were both white and in their early twenties. One had dark blond hair and wore a red top, while the other was about 5ft 7ins tall, of average build and wearing a dark hooded top.

Last week, a 26-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a gay friend in Edinburgh. David Nairne, originally from Inverness, was told he must spend a minimum of 20 years in prison before being considered for parole, according to the BBC. He carried out a "vicious and sustained attack" on Alan Ross stabbing him 11 times in the face and neck in February. A jury at the High Court in Livingston unanimously found him guilty of murdering Mr Ross in his Pilton home. The fatal wound was so deep it severed the jugular veins on both sides of the victim's neck. The jury returned a majority verdict of guilty to a charge that he attempted to defeat the ends of justice by setting fire to the dead man's clothing, making a microwave "bomb" and disposing of evidence, including blood-soaked clothing and two knives. Firemen who were called to Ross's flat in Pilton Road North after neighbours smelled smoke told how they found the victim's badly charred corpse on the floor of his bedroom with the walls and bed soaked in blood. Nairne was given a concurrent six-year prison sentence for the secondary charge and both sentences were backdated to March 1 when he was first remanded in custody. During the trial several witnesses gave evidence that Ross had previously told friends that he had "slept" with Nairne. Nairne had claimed in his defence that he was heterosexual and had never had sex with a man, and said he had been "provoked" into attacking Mr Ross after he woke up to find his victim performing a sex act on him. Advocate depute Stephen O'Rourke, who during the trial described the knife attack as "frenzied", revealed Nairne had an extensive criminal record which ran to four pages of convictions, and added that the accused, who was unemployed and lived in Edinburgh at the time of the murder, had a long history of alcohol and substance problems. Defence counsel Robert Anthony QC told the court: "Clearly he is a man with alcohol problems. He never denied taking the life of Mr Ross and he offered a plea of guilty to culpable homicide in March." Temporary Judge John Beckett told Nairne, "The infliction of a large number of stabbing injuries to the head and neck of the deceased demonstrates that you carried out a vicious and sustained attack on Alan Ross, a well-liked, kind gentleman who showed only kindness to you. You were armed with a knife when you arrived at Alan Ross's flat. You killed him by stabbing him through the neck, causing an injury which almost extended out the other side of his neck."