Romney accused of bullying childhood ‘gay fellow schoolmate’

Washington - Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has been accused of being a playground bully, after reports emerged of his former school friends claiming that he had bullied a fellow school boy, who was believed to be gay.

Romney’s friends said that he pinned the fellow schoolboy down, who was presumed to be gay and chopped off his hair fringe.

According to The Telegraph, the reports of Romney leading a "prep school posse" against a boy who was teased over his sexuality surfaced soon after the issue of same-sex marriage took centre stage in the build-up to the U.S. election, with Obama shifting his opinion on the debated issue.

However, Romney denied any recollection of the incident or that he ever thought the boy was a homosexual.

He said it was ‘something that was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s’and dismissed the misunderstanding as "high school pranks".

According to reports, five former schoolmates of Romney claimed that the incident took place in 1965 at the Cranbrook prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, when Romney set on John Lauber, a boy one year below him.

Expressing their shame and remorse at the incident, the friends said that Romney led a gang of pupils to a dorm room where Lauber was sitting, shouting about how they were planning to cut his bleach-blonde hair that fell across one eye.

“They came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors,” said Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer, and Romney’s former schoolmate.