Australian inquiry probes 40 years of gay hate killings

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A government inquiry has begun hearing evidence of unsolved deaths resulting from gay hate crime over four decades in Australia’s most populous state. Peter Gray, a lawyer assisting the inquiry, said on Wednesday that the investigation of suspicious deaths in New South Wales is the “first of its kind anywhere in the world.” Gray says the responses from Australian society to violent LGBTQ deaths have been “sadly lacking.” Violence against gay men in Sydney was particularly prevalent from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s due to the AIDS epidemic. A report by an HIV support group, ACON, found almost half of the 88 “gay hate” and “anti-gay bias” deaths in New South Wales between 1976 and 2000 occurred in that period.