Disgusting homophobe tells children their dads are ‘paedophiles who stole you’ in disturbing rant
Robbie Pierce and his husband Neal Broverman, who were abused by a stranger on an Amtrak train. (Twitter/ Robbiepierce)
A gay dad says he was the victim of a terrifying homophobic onslaught from a stranger on an Amtrak train, who told his children their fathers were paedophiles who “stole” them.
Robbie Pierce and his husband Neal Broverman decided to take the Amtrak rail service up the California coast for a holiday with their their six-year-old son and five-year-old daughter for spring break.
But “nine hours into a pleasant ride”, the family was accosted by an aggressive homophobe, who accused the couple of being paedophiles and of stealing their children.
“I stood between the stranger and my son, whose life has already been so hard, who carries traumas larger than his whole small, fierce frame,” Pierce wrote on Twitter.
“I was immovable. ‘Get away from my family.'”
I stood between the stranger and my son, whose life has already been so hard, who carries traumas larger than his whole small, fierce frame. I was immovable. "Get away from my family." [2/10]
— Robbie ?? (@Robbiepierce) April 13, 2022
The man, Pierce said, responded: “Family!? That’s not a family! You’re rapists. You steal Black and Asian kids.”
Pierce and Broverman’s two children were “petrified” and crying, while the man shouted at them: “These guys aren’t natural. Homosexuals are an abomination. They steal and rape kids.”
Pierce took the children to another train carriage, while his “ferocious husband went into papa bear mode and shouted the man away”.
I grabbed the kids and moved them to another car while my ferocious husband went into papa bear mode and shouted the man away from us. Eventually the conductor arrived and the man lost his focus on us. [5/10]— Robbie ?? (@Robbiepierce) April 13, 2022
But the children were inconsolable for almost an hour.
They wanted to be away from windows so they wouldn’t see him again,” wrote Pierce.
“They wanted to practice screaming loud enough for help to come. I want to scream too.”
While the family had dealt with homophobic abuse in the past, Pierce said the words “pedophiles” and “rapists” were “new in the mix, at least out loud”.
To blame, he said, was the culture war raging in the media and in government, across the US and the UK.
“We all know where that comes from,” he said.
“So thanks to Fox and Murdoch, JK Rowling and Marjorie Taylor Green, to the senators and priests.”
Speaking to his son, Pierce discovered that the man had approached him by the train toilets to confront him about his family. The children, fearful, asked their dad whether they would see the man again.
“I said, ‘Probably not him, but men just like him. But we’ll be stronger each time. And most people aren’t like that guy.’ I hope this was true. Please help us protect our families, friends. We feel so outnumbered and tired.”
He called on allies to not only step in when they witnessed the abuse of queer people, but also to “shut down this rhetoric everywhere it rears its ugly head anywhere, especially when we’re not there”.
The next day, Pierce returned to Twitter to explain that “another passenger found me [and] reached out this evening to let me know that in the chaos I may have missed that other people were being verbally supportive”.
She also alerted Amtrak police and offered to testify in any legal action the gay dads might take.
Pierce said that while the situation was “scary”, and his “feelings of being alone and frightened were real feelings”, the woman who reached out and the response to his post had shown that “there are far more kind people than scary ones, and I appreciate this reminder from all of you…This world is better when you look for the good, isn’t it?”
PinkNews has approached Amtrak for comment.
