Casey Gates - Homosexual Prisons
An hour ago

Casey Gates joins Ed Opperman to talk about the existance, belive it or not, of 'gay prisons'

From BBC News

Set in one of the coldest and windiest small towns in Australia, Cooma prison holds a dark secret.

Not only was it reopened in 1957 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 in 1979, and later set up the Corrective Services Museum in Cooma. He believed inmates were sent there for their own safety.

"Cooma was a protective institution. We'd red stamp homosexual prisoners with 'N/A': non-association with mainstream prisons," he tells the BBC. "They were at risk of violence at bigger prisons like Long Bay [in Sydney]."

But another former employee, Cliff New, claims it was for less compassionate reasons. He told Audible's podcast series The Greatest Menace that psychologists and psychiatrists were "coming in all the time" after the jail reopened in 1957.

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. "You wouldn't bunk two in together… that was one of our biggest problems - keeping an eye on them," says Mr New, now 94.

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