A man texted his mother asking her to ‘please help!!!’ after the hook-up he met on Grindr assaulted him in his own home.
Darwyn Perry, 37, invited himself to visit after the pair struck up a friendship on the networking app.
But when he arrived at the man’s rural Wester Ross home he helped himself to alcohol, and “joked about with knives” before punching, slapping and kicking his victim, who is autistic.
The 29-year-old victim’s ordeal only came to an end when his father arrived and ordered a naked Perry to leave the property.
Perry, of Ardival Court, Strathpeffer, was tried at Inverness Sheriff Court on a single charge of assaulting the man between June 21 and 22 last year.
Assault victim met attacker on Grindr
In evidence led by fiscal depute Naomi Duffy Welsh, the victim told the court that the pair had made contact over Grindr, and had been messaging on that platform and then via WhatsApp for around two months before the incident.
He said their conversations had been “friendly” before Perry suggested a “spur of the moment” visit to the man’s village home.
The man said that when he met Perry off the bus he seemed “jovial” but was loud.
“He shouted a bit, but I thought that was just excitement,” the man told the court.
The court heard how Perry helped himself to alcohol he found in the man’s kitchen, drinking first gin and then Jack Daniels.
But the mood began to change when Perry “started joking around with knives” in the kitchen, and then began to get physical with his victim.
“I told him to stop a couple of times when he was getting a bit too rough,” the man said adding: “Initially I thought he was just being excitable.”
‘It became much more sinister’
But the witness told Sheriff Robert Frazer: “Afterwards it became much more sinister. When he was starting to punch and kick, that became far less jokey on his part.
“That was when I was saying ‘stop, enough, be gentle’. I was quite forceful with my words.”
But Perry paid little heed to the man’s protestations and the attacks continued “until the early morning” despite the man performing a massage on Perry and sharing his bed with him.
“He would wake me up and assault me several times,” the witness said, describing how Perry’s punches got “harder” when he failed to respond to them.
“Regardless of my protestations he would just continue.”
The man told the court that he was reluctant to seek help during the night, fearing that Perry would react badly.
He said: “The idea of calling the police had raised in my mind, I was concerned that he would know what I was doing and become deadly violent.”
‘This a****** has been hurting me all night’
The man eventually sent a text to his mother in the morning which read: “Hi this is urgent, can you call the police please. This a******* has been hurting me all night, pinching, punching, kicking and slapping me.”
This was followed by three further texts which read: “Now!!!!”, “Help!!!!” and “Please help!!!!”
As a result of the texts, the man’s father went to his home and escorted a naked Perry from the property – noting that he was “slurring” and “didn’t seem to put up any resistance” before gathering the man’s clothes and putting those outside as well.
Describing his son’s demeanour to the court, the dad said: “Being autistic he doesn’t show a lot of emotion.
“You could see he was shaken.”
Perry denied the assaults during a police interview but gave no spoken evidence during the trial, with his defence conducted by solicitor John MacColl.
Sheriff Robert Frazer found him guilty of assaulting the man and told him: “The record of previous convictions displays a number of previous convictions, which are domestically aggravated in one way or another.”
He deferred sentencing for the production of a criminal justice social work report and continued consideration of a motion for the imposition of a non-harassment order preventing Perry from approaching or contacting his victim.
