Snowballs containing stones which were hurled at the windows of a home of three gay men were made by children - one as young as three, Gloucester Youth Court has been told.
The facts emerged during the trial of a 13-year-old boy accused of harassing the men.
During the trial witness Howard Jeans-Seymour, one of the men living in the house, said he believed one of the youngsters outside his home was much smaller than the others. “I would put the smaller one at around three to four,” he told Judge Joti Bopa-Rai.
The court heard how police installed closed circuit television outside Jeans-Seymour’s Gloucestershire home at the end of last year in a bid to stop homophobic abuse but the camera was removed some months later and the alleged abuse started again.
In February Jeans-Seymour, who lives with his partner Imad Belkhadria and another man, Mark Fern went outside the house when he discovered a group of youths.
“One was throwing the snowballs and they were making them and handing them to him. The snowballs hit my bedroom windows,” he told the court.
He believed around five snowballs, containing stones, were thrown. “There were stones on the window ledge,” he said, before describing the alleged attacker and the rest of the group.
“The others were anything between 10 and 13,” he said. “They ran off and the one who I considered to have thrown the snowballs stood there in defiance.”
He said they made a slur about his appearance and sexuality. Similar incidents were alleged to have happened on three other occasions in February.
The defendant, who was 12 at the time of the alleged attacks, denies a charge of conduct which amounted to the harassment of Jeans- Seymour by throwing snowballs and coins and by shouting homophobic abuse.
He denies two similar charges relating to Fern and Belkhadria, another of abusing all three men, and of assault on another boy.
On another occasion, Jeans-Seymour said stones thrown at his home “were like thunder” and when he went outside, one stone just missed his face.
The boy and his father visited him to say sorry in March, and his father asked him to apologise,
“He mumbled. I did not hear an apology. In my eyes he did not apologise. I said I was not stopping any process because it was in the hands of the police.
“The father said “fair enough” and shook my hand and went off.”
The trial continues.