Bram* (27) still doesn’t understand how things could go so wrong so quickly at the end of July. After a nightcap at the gay pub De Regenboog in the city center of Eindhoven, he and two other boys out of nowhere received a few heavy kicks and punches. A month and a half later, the two attackers are still missing. “I would love to ask them what the point of this was.”
Bram met the two boys, a couple, earlier on July 29 during a wedding of mutual friends. When the party came to an end around two o’clock in the morning, the three decided to have one last drink at Stratumseind. When they left there an hour later, things went wrong.
“We walked into an alley,” says Bram. “We were approached by those boys there. They asked where we had been drinking. When we told them, they asked if we were gay too. Yes, we said.”
For a moment it seemed to stop there. Just for a moment, because a few seconds later one of Bram’s friends received a hard kick in the back of the head. He was instantly unconscious. While his friend and Bram tried to drag him away, they also received the necessary blows. “I don’t even know if or where I was hit exactly, it happened so quickly.”
“It was completely unexpected.”
17 seconds. That’s how long it took between the moment the boys spoke to the trio and the first kick. “Sometimes you immediately have the feeling that a situation could go wrong. Then you are extra alert,” Bram muses. “But now we didn’t have that at all. It was completely unexpected.”
The impact of the attack is great. For example, the boy who was kicked still suffers from concentration problems. Still, it doesn’t stop Bram from going back into the city. “It hasn’t happened since then. I’ve been to more festivals, where there is often a nicer atmosphere. But it hasn’t made me any more reserved.”
“The camera images are so good that someone has to recognize them.”
He does hope that the two boys will still be caught. “I actually don’t understand why it hasn’t happened yet. The camera images are so good that someone has to recognize them. I understand that you don’t want to screw your friends or family in, but we are talking about serious abuse here. Report you anonymously if necessary.”
If it does indeed come to that, Bram would like to have a conversation with the attackers. “I would ask them why they are doing this and let our side of the story be heard. What is the point of this? On the other hand, they are ultimately the losers. We may have taken the hit, but if you think as succinctly as these guys, you always lose in this society.”
* Bram is a fictitious name. The real name is known to the editors.
