Spain: Teenage lesbian left unconscious after being pelted with stones outside school
A gay teenage girl was left unconscious on Monday after she was pelted with stones upon leaving school in Spain’s Murcia region.
Gay rights groups have called for stricter anti-homophobia laws after the girl, accompanied by another boy, were attacked by three schoolmates who followed them out of the school grounds in Caravaca de la Cruz.
According to the Local, the assailants shouted “Poofter!” and “Dyke!” and “Perverts” as they followed the teens.
The victims put up with the insults for a while “thinking they were going to stop,” said Rubén López, a spokesperson with Spain’s FELGTB gay rights group.
However, eventually the young boy turned to the aggressors and told them to leave him and his friend “in peace”.
This prompted the schoolmates to begin pelting them with stones.
“One of the stones hit the girl in the head. She lost consciousness and fell to the floor. They had to rush her to hospital,” López added.
The girl suffered bruising in the incident while the boy was left “afraid, intimidated, humiliated and overwhelmed.”
FELGTB has condemned Spain’s education minister for scrapping the socially liberal citizenship studies course in favour of the more conservative ethics course.
The gay rights group No Te Prives has also said Murcia should look into tougher laws against homophobia, similar to Catalonia.
n July, it was reported the the majority of the hate crime in Spain in 2014 had been motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity.
Anti-LGBT crime had the highest figure for hate crime last year, with 452 identified cases.
Spain is known as one of the more LGBT-friendly countries in Europe, with the legalisation of same-sex marriage being almost a decade old.
