Gay designer was brutally beaten by a man shouting slurs. The assailant is going away for years.

In September 2019, gay fashion designer Pol’ Atteu was brutally attacked at a charity fashion show in Los Angeles by a man who was angry that his daughter had not been chosen to be in the show. Five years later, Atteu is finally getting justice. 

The attack sent Atteu to the hospital for two days with a concussion, a broken shoulder, bruises, and other injuries. His attacker, Jesus Rodolfo Zepeda, was apprehended, but due to COVID-19-related jail measures, he was released shortly after. 

Related: 7 suspects identified in brutal campus anti-LGBTQ+ attack. They can’t be charged with a hate crime.

In the wake of this crime, out Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel blasted the state legislature for failing to make LGBTQ+ folks a protected class.

The assault took place in Saint John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles, in the backstage of a fashion show that the couple put on to benefit the organization Make-A-Wish. The event was also featured in the couple’s reality television show, Gown and Out in Beverly Hills. Zepeda’s nine-year-old daughter had been cut from the show by Atteu. 

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This week, Zepeda was sentenced to five years in state prison for the assault. The sentence also includes probation after his jail sentence and stipulates heavy supervision of Zepeda’s behavior, with immediate imprisonment for even minor infractions during probation. It also gives a 10-year protection order for both Atteu and his husband, Patrik Simpson.

Atteu and Simpson feel as if they were wronged by the justice system due to its hesitancy to call the attack a hate crime, though it eventually acknowledged it as one. During the assault, Zepeda called Atteu homophobic slurs repeatedly. 

“I don’t think I was given justice,” Atteu said in an interview with The Advocate. “I don’t think we were able to find a resolution, and I understand that it had to fall within the guidelines of what the law is, but it wasn’t there to protect me, it wasn’t there to help me.”

Making sure that the courts said it was a hate crime was important to Atteu. “It was important for us to bring attention to it and to make sure that this was, in fact, duly noted as a hate crime, as it was,” he said. 

The courts acknowledging the assault as a hate crime mattered to the couple for more than just legal reasons, but also as a way to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community, which often struggles when engaging with the criminal justice system. 

Atteu and Simpson plan to use this experience to help advocate for other LGBTQ+ people going through similar struggles so they don’t have to undergo the same lengthy legal battle that Atteu and Simpson went through. 

“I want to see if I can advocate for others and maybe give them insight into how it could be done, what documentation needs to be filled, where they go to get the kind of help they need,” Atteu said.

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