A child as young as three was part of a gang making snowballs thrown at a gay man's home, a court heard yesterday.

During the trial of a 13-year-old boy accused of harassing three gay men, witness Howard Jeans-Seymour said he believed one of a group of 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 at Gloucester Youth Court, after he was asked about a group of youngsters with the alleged attacker.

The court heard that homophobic abuse stopped when police installed closed circuit television outside the home Mr Jeans-Seymour shares with his partner Imad Belkhadria and Mark Fern in November 2008. But it was removed a few months later and it is alleged the abuse started again.

On February 2 this year, Mr Jeans-Seymour, of The Crapen, Cam, realised Mr Belkhadria was not in the house with him.

"I went to look for him," he said. "There was a group of youths outside, there were five of them.

"One was throwing the snowballs and they were making them and handing them to him. The snowballs hit my bedroom windows." 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 February 5, 25 and 27.

The defendant, who was 12 at the time of the alleged attacks, denies a charge of conduct which amounted to the harassment of Mr Jeans- Seymour by throwing snowballs and coins and by shouting homophobic abuse. He denies two similar charges relating to Mr Fern and Mr Belkhadria, another of abusing all three men, and of assault on another boy.

On another occasion, Mr Jeans-Seymour said stones thrown at his home "were like thunder" and when he went outside, one stone just missed his face.

On March 6, he said the boy and his father visited him to say sorry.

"His father asked him to apologise," he said. "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.