Disregard documented and the lives of the men and teenagers who were victimised by the criminal law system need to be recorded and celebrated, what has been described as ‘The Human Right to Memorialisation’. Dr Averill Earls is one of the few historians who have researched criminalization in the earlier period and she found that there was a massive increase in prosecutions in Dublin after Independence. An estimated 18 men were prosecuted in Dublin under British rule between 1900 and 1920, however this ‘skyrocketed’ to 390 from 1924 to 1962. Averill has written a moving article about a relationship honour equally all those held in Industrial Schools, Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and related institutions. The victims of criminalization should be included in the remit of this initiative. The Gay Project Cork commissioned Clifford Chance, an international legal firm, to carry out a pro-bono assessment of Disregard legislation in the 7 countries that have such a scheme. The expert legal survey of these countries - Australia, Germany, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, England, and Scotland - is a hugely valuable resource for campaigners for Disregard legislation here and in other countries. It always surprised me that no State in the US, even the progressive ones, have Disregard legislation. The criminalization of homosexuality was one of the worst human rights violations by the Irish State similar to other human rights violations such as the Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, and Mother and Baby Homes. Applications for a disregard would be assessed by an independent body. Posthumous applications could be made by relatives or the partner of the deceased man. The scheme would be open to transgender and non-binary people. It would have been traumatic for the men and juveniles who were arrested but not charged, or prosecuted but acquitted, and the social consequences would have been very damaging, so it is very important that they would be able to apply for a Disregard of their Garda and Court records. The Working Group recommended that LGBT+ organisations are supported and resourced to undertake outreach and promotion of the scheme. The Working Group recognised the wider damage done by criminalization in promoting prejudice and discrimination and recommended that the State recognise and address this wider damage as part of a Restorative Justice programme. Disregard Legislation and Restorative Justice By Kieran Rose (he/him)
Disregard legislation to exonerate those men and juveniles who were arrested, prosecuted, convicted and in some cases imprisoned should be introduced immediately and other Restorative Justice measures should be implemented. The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance is reviewing Ireland this year and gives a good opportunity to raise the human rights violations arising from criminalization. Disregard legislation is a commitment of the Programme for Government and the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, who has said a number of times recently that she intends to publish the Heads of Bill this year. However with a General Election coming up it will require a lot of goodwill and advocacy to get the full Bill published and passed by the Oireachtas before the election. Much of the groundwork has been done. The Department of Justice Working Group on Disregard Legislation Final Report was published in June 2023 fittingly on the 30 th anniversary of gay law reform. The Working Group included three people with LGBT+ expertise and a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. A Public Consultation was held in 2022 and many LGBT groups and individuals and others like ICTU and ICCL responded, a summary of the Public Consultation responses was published by the Department of Justice in June 2023. Also published by the Department of Justice was a resource document ‘Convictions for Homosexual Acts in the Irish Courts, 1922-1993’ by Dr Niamh Howlin, on records of prosecutions etc that are available in the National Archives and reports in newspapers. Cork prosecutions feature prominently in the report.
between Ronald Brown, a State Solicitor, and Leslie Price from London deserting from the British Army who met in Dublin in 1941. Both were tried for ‘gross indecency ’ but acquitted. Leslie was also tried for a sexual relationship with a different man, and was convicted and sentenced to 6 months in the juvenile wing of Mountjoy Prison, showing, as Averill says, that working class men with little power were the most vulnerable to criminalization. Dr Tom Hulme in QUB is doing similar research into the policing of male same-sex desire in Belfast in the early decades of the twentieth century. Tullow in 1969 is a shocking example of a Garda witch hunt against homosexuality in a small Irish town. Twenty men including three juveniles aged 15, 16 and 17 years were charged under the anti-gay laws. Some were sentenced to 2 years in prison although the sentence was suspended. We only know of this shocking case because of the determination of an amateur gay historian creatively using the National Archives records and newspaper reports.
This international survey was followed up with the engagement of the Irish legal firm A&L Goodbody and two Barristers, Ceile Varley and Cillian Bracken, to prepare a draft Disregard Bill that would assist in the enactment of the best possible Disregard legislation in Ireland learning from all the other countries and based on the Working Group report. The origin of the Disregard project goes back to 2016 when the Labour Party introduced a Private Members Bill on Disregard. In June 2018, the twenty-fifth anniversary of gay law reform, the Dail and Seanad unanimously passed a Motion of Apology for criminalization with very fine speeches by TDs and Senators. While the period of criminalization was bleak and oppressive, LGBT+ people were resilient, resisted the severe repression of the earlier period of the twentieth century and created good lives and relationships for themselves, some by emigrating. The undocumented lives of LGBT+ people in earlier more difficult times deserve to be recorded and celebrated. Patrick Hennessy (born in Cork in 1915) and Henry Robertson Craig lived together openly as a gay couple in Dublin from the 1940s and their paintings were explicitly gay in their themes. Dr Mary McAuliffe has researched women republicans, feminists and trade unionists who lived together all their lives as same- sex couples. Patrick Duggan and Charles Zarb met in Dublin as teenagers in the early 1950s but ‘Dublin was no city for gay young men’ (Irish Independent 29.5.2022) and they moved to London where they lived together as a couple for the rest of their lives getting a Civil Partnership in 2007. Patrick and Charles died within weeks of one another in 2022. Kieran Rose is a former member of the Department of Justice Working Group on Disregard Legislation, and founder member of the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign www.kieranrose.ie www.LGBTDisregard.ie
One of the worst aspects of this wider damage is that Gay Health Action in the 1980s was refused funding by the Department of Health to carry out safer-sex education, because sexual relationships between males were criminalised, this undoubtedly put gay men's lives at greater risk. The then ‘Cork Examiner’ also used criminalization as a reason to refuse to publish advertisements from Gay Information Cork for their telephone information line in the 1980s. Criminalization led to a bigotry that placed less value on the lives of gay men. John Roche was murdered in Cork in 1982. His killer was put on trial but his Barrister used the ‘homosexual panic’ defence case, where the gay man is blamed for being killed because of his sexuality. The defence Senior Counsel said that the defendant did not really intend to kill John Roche but “his real intention was to rid himself of the shame and degradation he had got involved in. He was striking out at the debauchery he had got ensnared in.” The life of John Roche needs to be
Extraordinary Garda enforcement of the anti-gay laws continued into the 1970s, renowned civil rights solicitor Garrett Sheehan recounts how he defended two gay men who were charged with gross indecency: “based on the evidence of a sergeant from Rathmines going into the front garden of a house that was in apartments, peering through the window and maintaining that he had seen sexual activity between two adult men…On that basis, these two men were prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison.” (Irish Independent 24.6.2018) The Government is committed to developing a National Centre for Research and Remembrance,
remembered and celebrated. We know little of the history of criminalization and the policing of male same-sex desire especially in the earlier part of the twentieth century. This hidden history needs to be
The Working Group report is wide-ranging and based on detailed research and consideration over two years and is very positive and generous in its recommendations. It states that a disregard scheme should be based on principles of human rights and equality.
‘a site of conscience’, at the old Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street Dublin 1 to
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