Gay man who was beaten to within an inch of his life in a 1980s hate crime says a police report claimed he ‘deserved’ to be attacked
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A gay man who was beaten to within an inch of his life in a 1980s hate crime has claimed that a police report from the time said he “deserved” to be attacked.
Martin Parker told The Australian that he was beaten so badly by a man who pretended to be gay outside a public toilet in Sydney that his “jaw was hanging off”.
During the attack, the assailant reportedly used anti-gay slurs.
“I couldn’t believe how disfigured I was,” Parker said.
“I could grab hold of my upper jaw and actually pull it out of my mouth.”
Police reportedly claimed Martin Parker ‘deserved’ to be beaten in an anti-gay hate crime .
Parker stumbled into a police station later that night for help and was taken to an emergency room.
His injuries were so bad that medical staff thought he had been in a high-speed car accident.
Reflecting on the incident, Parker said he urged police to pursue his attacker – but officers seemed to have little interest in finding the man.
I could grab hold of my upper jaw and actually pull it out of my mouth.
Six weeks later, police told him they had no record of the attack whatsoever.
Disturbingly, he later discovered that two police officers had written a short report into the incident that included “comedy notes” about how he “deserved” to be beaten because he was hanging around a well-known area for gay men.
A man was recently charged in the suspected gay hate killing of Scott Johnson.
Parker was inspired to speak up about his attack when he heard that an arrest had finally been made in the suspected gay-hate killing of Scott Johnson, whose body was found at the base of a cliff in New South Wales in 1988.
His death was initially ruled a suicide, but a 2018 coroner report found that he had likely been murdered.
Police recently arrested Scott Price at his home in Sydney and charged him with Johnson’s murder on May 12.
It has been estimated that around 80 gay men were murdered in Sydney by homophobic gangs, with many pushed off cliffs, around the same time as Johnson.
There are reportedly at least 23 unsolved murders that took place in well-known coastal gay beats near Sydney, spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s.
