"When I decided to come out to a friend of mine he went crazy. He was under the influence of alcohol. He started to kick me and punch me in the head. I managed to get away and run out of the apartment and go directly to the police. All I heard there was ridicule."
•"My parents, mostly my father, beat me for being who I am, for being gay. His outbursts of aggression were unpredictable. It was worse when I tried to defend myself. It would end up that I would be choked or hit on the face. My parents thought, if I don't meet anyone with a different sexual orientation, then I won't be homosexual. So they basically created a prison for me. I ran away from home three times."
•"At school I was insulted by a kid many times stronger than me. He said stuff like: 'If Hitler was alive you and your ass would be in a gas chamber long ago', and he would throw me up against the wall. It all happened with teachers and other students watching, and things like this happened a lot."
•"When I told a friend about my orientation he started to tell me it wasn't possible and I must be mistaken. I tried to explain my decision and I protested against what he was saying. He wanted to personally convince me that I was wrong, in fact he raped me."
•"After my parents and sister found out that I'm with a girl, they lost it. A battle started to 'save their daughter's humanity'. They tormented my girlfriend over the phone, threatened her, slandered her, came to where we lived, called my girlfriend's mother, they spread gossip in the churches near her family home and at her work about her sexual orientation and that it's a threat to morality. Since she worked with children, she was fired quickly for whatever pretext. I didn't notify the police because I thought it would only make matters worse."
- Excerpts from testimonies in a report to be published next week by Poland's Campaign against Homophobia