A prosecutor is getting called out for blaming the victim of a brutal, hate-motivated murder on the victim’s “sexual predilections.”
Psychiatrist Dr. Gary Jenkins was killed by a “sadistic” teen girl and two adult men this past July in Cardiff as he approached a gay cruising area in a park. The assailants beat and kicked him for a full 15 minutes while calling him slurs.
Related: Burger King employees chased gay dads away while shouting slurs in alleged hate crime
“Stamp on his head, stamp on his head,” one of the men shouted.
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They robbed him and walked away, leaving the bi psychiatrist to die as they bought alcohol with his debit card. “I needed that,” the teen girl was caught on camera saying as they finished beating him.
“She’s fucking evil. Sadistic,” one witness told the court at trial. He said she thought “everything she was doing was just funny.”
“I don’t know why they were hurting him so much.”
The teens pled guilty to manslaughter and were found guilty of murder. But it’s prosecutor Dafydd Enoch’s words that are now drawing attention.
At the trial, Enoch said that Jenkins, who was previously married to a woman and was a devoted father to his children, died because he was “engaging in this activity,” putting the blame on Jenkins’s sexuality instead of the 15 minutes of beating.
“Dr. Jenkins was actively bisexual and when he moved back to Cardiff it would seem that this particular side of his character came to the fore,” Enoch told the court in his opening statement.
He also said Jenkins’s “sexual predilections were to be his undoing” and noted that “for all his peccadillos, he was a much-loved and admired individual,” as if it’s surprising that a bisexual person could be loved or admired.
“The responsibility being put on the victim rather than the perpetrators is obviously insensitive in our view and wrong as it is a distraction from the crimes that were committed by the perpetrators,” said Iestyn Wyn of Stonewall Cymru.
“We have a long way to go,” said Member of Welsh Parliament Jeremy Miles about the prosecutors’ words.
He was not “undone” by his “sexual proclivities”. He was brutally attacked, and died.
We have a long way to go. https://t.co/II08oYzwWx
— Jeremy Miles (@Jeremy_Miles) January 26, 2022
“It was never my intention to apportion any blame on Dr. Jenkins,” he told the BBC. “The only people responsible for this horrific crime were those convicted today by the jury.”
“The suggestion that Dr. Jenkins was in any way to blame is completely wrong. We apologize for inappropriate and insensitive remarks made during the opening statement.”
