Police in Canberra are investigating two cases of serious assault that have occurred after people connected on the dating app Grindr. Police believe the two similar incidents may be linked.
In one of the cases that occurred on Tuesday 16th July a man travelled to a home in the suburb of Denman Prospect to meet someone he’d connected with on the dating app. Police said when he arrived he was allegedly set on by a group of four men outside the property.
A few days later another man was allegedly attacked by a group of eight men in the early hours of the morning after making arrangements to meet some on the app.
ACT Police say they believe the incidents were linked because the details were incredibly similar.
“Both of those properties were vacant, and that’s obviously one of the reasons that they were chosen by the offenders,” Acting Commander Richard Breiner said.
“These weren’t just spur of the moment things, they’ve cased the place to say that there’s no one or nothing in there that might prevent the attacks from happening.”
Acting Commander Breiner said police believed the attacks were homophobic in nature because a number of gay slurs were used to the assaults, but police were also exploring all other avenues of inquiry.
“There were homophobic slurs used by the offenders in these matters,” he said.
“Obviously, any offence where it’s targeted at a gender or sexuality is something that we find particularly abhorrent.” the Acting Commander told a media conference.
It’s led to police issue advice for people meeting others through Grindr and other similar apps.
“If you’re meeting someone over a dating app, make sure that where you’re meeting is somewhere with other people, where it’s well lit, somewhere that you can actually have a conversation before retiring to do the rest of your date,” Briener said.
“If it’s early in the morning or outside of any hours where there’s a lot of people around and you’re going into a darkened street, then that’s not what we would consider taking care of your own personal safety.”
Similar cases have occurred in Perth in recent years.
In 2017 two young men pleaded guilty over a series of assaults on gay men they lured via online dating apps. Men were approached on Grindr and then lured to public spaces in the Thornlie area with the promise of sex. Once they arrived at the rendezvous they were attacked. One victim was left with bleeding on the brain, while another was struck with a modified baseball bat.
The following year there was a series of assaults of gay men in Perth’s northern suburbs where men were lured to desolate parks late at night. A group of eight teenage students were later convicted over the assaults and robberies.
In 2021 in two separate incidents men were assaulted after being lured to a late night rendezvous on a building site in Gosnells. Police later arrested and charged a 26 year-old man over the assaults.
