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Boston police are investigating a reported anti-gay beating that occurred this past weekend outside the city’s oldest gay bar.
Three men claim they were attacked just past midnight on Friday outside of Jacques Cabaret—a historic drag bar in Bay Village—during a bi-monthly kink event called Fascination. Police were called to the scene at 12:40am, Sgt. Detective John Boyle tells NewNowNext.
“The victim stated that his friend and him were outside and they were approached by three males,” Boyle says. (Authorities have not identified the victims.) “The victim stated that he was struck in the face and then fell to the ground at which time the suspect struck him with a shod foot multiple times to his face. The victim stated that the person eventually stopped and fled the area.”
Michael Flowers, a self-identified victim of the assault and an organizer of Fascination, has spoken out on his Facebook account, calling the incident a hate crime.
“We had been outside for roughly 2-5 minutes when we were approached by a group of men who I understood to be straight and had just exited the bar,” Flowers recalled in his post. “They began to joke with me about who I looked like and attempted to engage me. I responded, ‘Not tonight, guys, have a good night and get home safe.’”
Flowers said that when another man tried to intervene to protect him, he was pushed or punched.
“I remember getting hit in the face several times,” he added. “It is unclear to me how many times I was hit.”
Flowers also watched as another person on the ground was getting kicked and hit repeatedly. After a minute, the fight broke up, but another victim was covered in blood. Organizers for Fascination said all three victims had reported that the attackers used anti-gay epithets, including the word “faggot.”
“Fascination will no longer be happening at Jacques Cabaret as the events of last night have revealed the venue to be an unsafe space for our queer patrons,” the group wrote in a Facebook statement.
Boyle says that while the assailants were reported to have used “bias indicators” during the attack, authorities have yet to determine if the beating will be investigated as a hate crime. That determination will be made by the Community Disorders Unit.
Boston has seen a troubling uptick in hate crimes in recent years, with the FBI reporting the highest rate in a decade in 2017. Crimes spurred by anti-LGBTQ animus accounted for 16% of those incidents.
Earlier this fall, Mayor Martin Walsh re-launched Boston’s Human Rights Commission after a 23-year hiatus. The move aims to curb discrimination against immigrant communities but also has the power to tackle bias against LGBTQ people.
Jacques Cabaret is a Boston institution, nestled between the city’s downtown theatre district and the sleepy cobblestone neighborhood of Bay Village. It first opened in 1938 and began welcoming gay patrons in the mid-1940s, making it the oldest gay bar in the city. Anti-gay crimes are thought of as exceedingly unusual in the area, according to officials.
Boyle describes Friday night’s attack as “an isolated incident, not a random attack.” (He declined to elaborate.) An employee at Jacques Cabaret tells NewNowNext that they are cooperating with police but also declined to comment further.
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