Target of Gay Man's 'Hate Crime' Lawsuit Denies Ever Getting Violent

A Lockport man sued by an acquaintance from his Mormon church denied ever being in a homosexual relationship or battering the gay man who brought the lawsuit.

“I’m flabbergasted,” Philip Thorman, 30, said of the accusations leveled by 40-year-old Robert Owcarz of Romeoville.

Owcarz claimed he and Thorman had a “fling” and that the younger man proceeded to stiff him on thousands of dollars he spent bailing him out of jail and putting him up in a motel room, as well as on loans. Owcarz also said he was the victim of a hate crime, according to the lawsuit, alleging Thorman battered him because he is gay.

Thorman said none of it was true.

“We never got into a fight,” Thorman said. “I never touched him or hurt him once.”

Thorman believes Owcarz fabricated the allegation out of bitterness and possibly because he has run out of money.

Owcarz declined to discuss Thorman’s version of events.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Owcarz said.

Thorman said he met Owcarz at a Mormon house of worship three and a half years ago and that he “tried to fellowship him into the church.”

Thorman said they went bowling and he introduced Owcarz to his girlfriend. He also said he tried to dissuade Owcarz from being gay.

“In our religion, being gay, it’s a sin,” Thorman explained, telling how he believes homosexuality is based in temptation.

“I was really trying to help him out spiritually,” Thorman said

But instead of discouraging Owcarz, he said, his efforts seemed to have had the opposite effect.

“He started asking me why I can’t be with him,” Thorman said. “I said, ‘I’m not gay, Robert.’ He literally asked me to be his boyfriend again and again.”

Thorman was jailed for possessing heroin in November 2013. His case was nearing its end four months later, he said, and he was bound for rehab when he unexpectedly made bond. Thorman said this was not good news, as he had nowhere to live and no money to get a place. He also did not know who bailed him out.

“I had no idea,” he said. “On the walk down the guard said, ‘You have the most crazy friends.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘There’s the most flamboyant gay man down there wearing a wig.’”

And then he knew it was Owcarz, and he said he knew there were strings attached to his making bail.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to be your boyfriend.’ I said, You need to get me a motel room until I go to rehab.’

“I never told him to I was going to pay him back,” Thorman said. “I didn’t want him to bail me out,” telling how he was “happy in jail because I was waiting to go to rehab.”

Thorman said he is drug free and has his life back on track. While he insisted he was unworried by the lawsuit, he was bothered by the “hassle of it” and by the allegations made by Owcarz.

“I don’t want to talk trash about him,” Thorman said, “but he is very mentally unstable.”

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