Gay prison inmates

Set in one of the coldest and windiest small towns in Australia, Cooma prison holds a dark secret. Not only was it reopened in with the specific purpose of incarcerating men for "homosexual offences", it was also said to be used as a human testing ground with the ultimate goal of eradicating homosexuality from society.

Cooma's jail is believed to have been the only known homosexual prison in the world, according to a new podcast. Until now, even some prison staff say they didn't know the real reason gay prisoners were segregated there. Les Strzelecki, 66, started as a custodial services officer at the prison inand later set up the Corrective Services Museum in Cooma.

He believed inmates were sent there for their own safety. But another former employee, Cliff New, claims it was for less compassionate reasons.

Survivor Stories

He told Audible's podcast series The Greatest Menace that psychologists and psychiatrists were "coming in all the time" after the jail reopened in He understood these as attempts to convert them: "They were trying to get them on the 'right' track… They reckoned they could cure them.

It's also why prisoners were in single cells, he said. He reportedly gay "pride" at his pet project, telling the Sydney Morning Herald gay "Nowhere in Europe or America did I find any prisons where homosexuals were separated from other prisoners. A press statement from Mr Downing prisons Cooma prison as "the only penal institution in the world, so far as is known, devoted specifically to the detention of homosexual offenders".

Prisoners at Cooma were incarcerated for being gay, or crimes related to being gay; homosexuality wasn't decriminalised in NSW until New draconian state laws in had cracked down on homosexuality. They followed pressure from the state's police commissioner, Colin Delaney, who, according to the then attorney general, felt "that remedial legislation [was] an urgent necessity to combat the evil".

The crime of buggery carried a year sentence. Attempted buggery carried five years, and in a harsher crackdown, a clause was added stating "with or without the consent of such person". Both Mr Wotherspoon and the podcast cite evidence of police acting as "agents provocateurs" to incite men to commit homosexual acts.

Inthe NSW government announced a committee of inquiry into the "cause and treatment of homosexuality". It would involve "experts in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, penology and social and moral welfare", a statement said. They included two religious reverends, two senior penal system staff and two academics from the University of Sydney.

It names Cooma prison as "a special institution for convicted homosexual offenders" which will "facilitate the investigation". Once a "scientific prison of the problem and possible solution" has been found, Mr Downing is quoted as saying, "the government considers that the problem must be attacked with vigour".

Some even reoffended to rejoin their boyfriends inside. The elusive report has never been found - something Mr Abboud says amounts to a "cover up". It's unclear when homosexual prisoners were no longer sent to Cooma. Mr Abboud believes gay prisoners may have been sent there until the early s, citing a statement from the inmate services minister claiming the policy still stood.

Sex offenders were also sent to Cooma and this further stigmatised gay inmates, says Mr Abboud.