Victoria launches hate-crime tool as inquiry hears of organised dating-app attacks

More than 95 reported attacks in two years, community groups say the real number is higher, and now there's a way to report without calling police.

Told by Claire Lawson · 1 October 2026

Victoria Police has launched a new online reporting tool for anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes, and if you're wondering why they bothered when Triple Zero already exists, the answer is sitting in a parliamentary inquiry transcript: more than 95 reported attacks in two years, and community organisations reckon the real number is miles higher.

The new option — added to Victoria Police's existing reporting channels — lets people share information through Anti-Violence Project Victoria's website, alongside Crime Stoppers. It's not a replacement for emergency calls or station visits, but it's an acknowledgement that not everyone who's been bashed wants to walk into a police station the next morning, and not everyone who's been threatened thinks what happened to them counts as a crime worth Triple Zero.

The tool arrives as a Legislative Council inquiry into anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes heard evidence that should make your stomach turn. Chad Hughes from Thorne Harbour Health told the committee that victims have been "lured through dating apps, ambushed by groups, beaten with bats, poles and machetes and filmed as they are abused and humiliated." The perpetrators are mostly young men, many of them teenagers. The attacks are deliberate and humiliating — victims forced to recite slurs on camera, footage shared online to give the attackers status in the manosphere.

More than 95 reported attacks and 42 arrests have been linked to this pattern of app-facilitated violence targeting gay and bisexual men across Victoria. Victims have been assaulted, robbed, extorted and filmed. Community organisations say the real number is almost certainly much higher, which tells you everything about the gap between what's happening and what's being reported.

Victoria Police LGBTQIA+ portfolio manager Jeremy Oliver described hate as an escalating process to the inquiry: "When someone holds a negative view about someone, they then go online and it kind of escalates to writing commentary. It then kind of leaps to attending a protest against a drag story time. Then it becomes an actual attack against community." He said most of the attacks in Victoria are groups of young adolescent boys and men, and in some cases the offending shows a surprising degree of organisation — one person managing a profile, another handling bank accounts, others carrying out assaults or extortion.

Deakin University's Josh Roose warned the inquiry that transgender people in particular have become symbolic targets within contemporary extremist ecosystems. "LGBTQIA+ people, and particularly trans people, are increasingly positioned as a symbolic enemy within contemporary extremist milieus," he said. "This is not simply a matter of prejudice or offensive speech, it is a process through which communities are turned into ideological objects." Young men often encounter this content first as humour, he said, before it becomes grievance and eventually a justification for harm.

Grindr's Head of Global Government Affairs, Joe Hack, told the inquiry that perpetrators using the platform to target the LGBTQIA+ community represented "a direct assault on everything we stand for." The company deployed in-app safety pop-up messages in Victoria and the ACT in 2025 in partnership with local LGBTQIA+ organisations, warning users of violence risks and providing safety guidance.

If you need to report a crime and there's no immediate danger, you can still call 131 444, visit your local station, or use the Police Assistance Line and Online Reporting. You can ask to speak to one of Victoria's more than 545 LGBTIQA+ Liaison Officers — they're trained, they're discrete, and they're in every region. The inquiry will table its report and recommendations in September.

But here's the thing the new tool is trying to solve: the gap between 95 reported attacks and "almost certainly much higher" is full of people who looked at their options and decided none of them were for them. Maybe they didn't think what happened was serious enough. Maybe they were scared of being outed. Maybe they just didn't want to spend six hours in a police station on a work night explaining to a stranger what a dating app is and why they were on it in the first place. The tool exists because that gap is a chasm, and every unreported attack is someone who decided the system wasn't built for them.