I’m sitting in a house in Glasgow talking to a mother about something I thought, or hoped, no longer happened. Slowly and carefully, she talks me through the details – the shocking details – and cautiously and warily, tells me how they’ve all been affected by it. “We’ve been traumatised,” she says, “and then retraumatised by how the system has let us down.”

Naturally, the worst effects have been on her son, Andrew (not his real name). Almost from day one, he was targeted by bullies at school and assaulted and abused, so much so that every time he went to school, or every time he was out with friends, or every time he was a couple of minutes late getting home, his mother would worry about what might have happened to him.

It then got even worse last June when Andrew, who was 14 at the time, was tied to a chair in a disused building in Glasgow by four boys, threatened by them, hit with a stick and forced to apologise for his sexuality. The teenagers told them there were some countries where he’d get his head cut off for being gay and to add to his distress, there was a container of liquid nearby which Andrew thought might be petrol. The attackers filmed the whole thing on their phones. Of course they did.

As I say, I thought, or hoped, this kind of thing was much less common than it used to be and that homophobic bullying no longer happened in the way it did 20 or 30 years ago, and there’s certainly some truth in that for some kids. But Andrew’s mum Anne tells me that homophobia still happens – by words (you know the ones) or violence. What’s more, she believes the authorities, schools, courts, social work, aren’t doing enough to prevent it.

The reaction of the authorities to the attack on Andrew last June is a case in point. Three of the boys involved were identified by the police, they were arrested and charged with abduction and assault and a court date was set. But then Andrew’s family discovered that the case had been turned over to the children’s hearing system without them being informed and that the attackers would face no punishment.

As far as Anne is concerned, this lack of action – attackers unpunished, victims left to fend for themselves – is typical of the response she and her family have received from the authorities, including their son’s school. Most people think there’s much more acceptance of gay people these days, says Anne, but that hasn’t been their experience. “We wonder how much things have actually improved,” she says.

The problem is that on the surface, it can look like they have. Check out the omnipresent pride flags in public places for instance. Businesses and companies are also very keen to sign up as LGBT champions and it can give the impression that everything’s fine and everyone's on board.

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But with no offence to the people who display the rainbow flag with good intentions, you need more than flags in Andrew’s situation: you need firm action to demonstrate that homophobia is unacceptable and has consequences. Instead, Andrew and his family have been told by the body that runs the children’s hearing system, the SCRA, that none of the attackers will be subject to a hearing. No action, no punishment. What’s more: Andrew and his family will not be told the reasons for the decision.

Anne’s reaction to this is understandable. Nobody, she says, wants kids who are caught shoplifting sweets or setting fire to a wheelie bin sent to a young offenders’ institution, but she also doesn’t want to see a serious abduction and homophobic assault go unpunished. She’s also concerned that the Children (Care and Justice) Bill, which was passed in April and changes the legal definition of “child” to include all under-18s, will mean serious offences, like the one committed against her son, being tolerated because they are committed by children.

Sadly, when I raised Andrew’s case with the authorities, I was not filled with hope; the SCRA said their primary consideration was the best interests of the child referred to them. The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain has also said about Andrew’s case that the UK is a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of the children which means the Crown Office must regard the best interests of the child as the primary consideration. But Andrew is at home, traumatised, unable to talk about the attack and unable to attend school for fear of another. So what about his interests? And what about the fact that a serious assault has gone down as unpunished and consequence-free?

Obviously, we have to be aware of the difficulties here. No one would deny that crimes committed by young people can require a sensitive approach. We also know the consequences that detention and incarceration can have on people at an early age; it’s in no one’s interests to turn a nascent criminal into a better criminal by locking him up.

However, change – actual change that affects people like Andrew and makes it more likely he can live his life without abuse or attack – will only happen if serious offences like homophobic assault have serious consequences. There I was, sitting in a house in Glasgow talking to a mother about something I thought, or hoped, no longer happened, and she told me in no uncertain terms it did happen and it could happen again.

Which leaves us with a worrying situation and a very real risk. It was described by the MSP Russell Findlay when he raised Andrew’s case at Holyrood. The risk, he said, was that children who’ve been harmed by crime will be further harmed by the system. That’s exactly what happened to Andrew. And it will undoubtedly happen again.