Gay Man “Needed To Learn His Lesson” Says Man Sentenced For Grindr Attack

A 20-year-old has pleaded guilty to bashing and robbing a man he lured through Grindr in a “vigilante” attack in Queensland last year.

On Monday, Blake Dean Nightingall pleaded guilty in Cairns Magistrates Court to assault occasioning bodily harm in company and stealing in an attack on October 22.

Nightingall created a fake Grindr profile using photos of himself as a 15-year-old and talked online with a man, before organising a meet-up at the Smithfield library. He claimed the man had sent sexually explicit photos during the exchange.

Nightingall told arresting police that he had wanted to “teach the man a lesson” for messaging with what was, to the best of his knowledge, an underage person.

“There’s another side to it,” he said. “It’s not like the other fella is fully innocent – the messages and shit – that gay dating app Grindr, there’s fellas on there all keen to meet up with 14-year-old boys, it just happened, it was a silly idea.”

When police asked Nightingall why he didn’t go to the police if he had concerns for children’s welfare, the 20-year-old said “it made more sense to get funny story out of it”.

“The defendant stated he was sorry for [the victim], but he needed to learn his lesson,” police prosecutor Tara Nona told the court.

Nightingall was one of three perpetrators of the attack, and the court heard another man was carrying a baseball bat as they approached the victim.

During the assault, the man was hit in the face with fists, choked from behind, thrown to the ground, and dragged, before the assailants ordered him to hand over his bank details and phone.

Nightingall told police that he didn’t attack the victim physically, but did record some of the assault on his phone.

Magistrate says attackers acted as “judge, jury, and executioner”

Defence solicitor Jacqueline O’Reilly said Nightingall was young, had no criminal history, and was “otherwise of good character from a good family”.

“He accepts that his behaviour was unacceptable,” she said. “The offending displays a lack of maturity and gung-ho attitude that is quite typical of young men of this age bracket – there was no thought of how the meeting would play out and the consequences of their actions to the victims or themselves,” O’Reilly told the court.

O’Reilly also said Nightingall understood his actions were “stupid”, and had pleaded guilty early on in the court process.

Magistrate Adam Johnson condemned the attack and sentenced Nightingall to 10 months imprisonment with an immediate parole release date.

“The circumstances were appalling, … you saw yourself with the other offenders as judge, jury and executioner,” Johnson said.

“You’re not a sworn constable – you don’t have the power to investigate offences – you were acting like a vigilante law enforcer when you embarked on this exercise of trying to lure someone in – you’ve represented yourself as a minor and classed the victim of something of a pedophile.

“The whole construct is … uncorroborated, bare allegations of things said, but he never actually stumped up the evidence to support his claims, we have an unsubstantiated story being proffered with no support as to the matters he said happened.”

Nightingall was also fined $900 for two drug offences incurred during his arrest and ordered him to pay $599 compensation within two weeks.

One of the other perpetrators of the attack, Max Fryer, was earlier sentenced to 10 months imprisonment with immediate parole, while the third alleged offender has not yet faced court.

The incident is not an isolated one, with other men having been targeted and attacked through Grindr across Sydney, Canberra, Victoria, and Western Australia in recent years. In May, Victorian police said they had arrested 35 people, mostly teenage boys, for similar offences in an eight month period.

Victoria’s LGBTQIA+ Commissioner Joe Ball has labelled the attacks “deliberate, organised, and hateful.”

“To our communities: I see you, and I know how distressing this is. Many of us remember the days when violence against gay men was normalised, overlooked – even expected. We will not go back.”