Murder arrest stirs memory of gay-hate bashing

Martin Parker can’t remember exactly what happened. He can, however, recall hazy details about the man who nearly killed him.

Martin Parker at his home in Karabar, southern NSW. Picture: Sean Davey

Martin Parker can’t remember exactly what happened. He can, however, recall hazy details about the man who nearly killed him ­almost 35 years ago.

Mr Parker claims he was ­viciously bashed, pelted with anti-gay slurs, and pummelled to the ground by a man who had pretended to be gay outside a public toilet at Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches in 1986. 

He was so badly beaten that when he staggered into the foyer of Dee Why police station hours later his “jaw was hanging off”.

Mr Martin, who gave up trying to pursue his attacker decades ago, said the arrest of Scott Phillip White last month over the 1988 alleged gay-hate killing of Scott Johnson, who fell to his death from a cliff near Manly’s North Head, had stirred up “fresh memories” of the night he nearly lost his life at Narrabeen.

Mr Martin’s injuries were so severe that experienced emergency room doctors at Mona Vale hospital assumed he had been in a high-speed car accident.

“I couldn’t believe how disfigured I was,” he said. “I could grab hold of my upper jaw and actually pull it out of my mouth.”

“The guy I had met near the toilet said he had an apartment in Manly so we decided to go back to his place but when I turned around to walk towards the car, he hit me in the back of the head and knocked me to the ground,” Mr Parker said. “He smashed my face six or seven times.”

Mr Parker said he tried to force police to pursue the man responsible for the alleged assault. Six weeks after the attack, however, he was told there was no record of the incident.

He later discovered a brief report had been written by two police officers on the night of the attack, but it only included “comedy notes” about how Mr Parker had “deserved” to be bashed because he had been at a ­so-called gay beat.

The police, many of whom had a reputation for hostility towards gay men, often carried out perfunctory investigations that overlooked the possibility of homicide.

“If NSW Police were lax about investigating homicides, it’s not hard to figure how they regarded reports of assault from gay victims,” said Stephen Tomsen, a criminologist at Western Sydney University.

“The northern beaches area had a handful of gangs that ­engaged in very regular gay bashings,” Mr Tomsen said.

“The bus shelter, attached ­toilets and carpark area next to Narrabeen Lake were regular sites of anti-gay bashings. Local police and local residents were well aware of this.”

The savage assaults on gay men were often discussed and joked about among the elite competitive kayakers who parked and trained at Narrabeen every day, Mr Tomsen said.

When asked by The Australian about Mr Martin’s allegations, however, NSW Police declined to respond to specific questions and instead reiterated the work of Strike Force Parrabell in 2018.

The investigation into the deaths of more than 80 gay men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s found about a third of them were “bias” crimes or suspected bias crimes targeting gay men.

In mid-2018, it referred 23 cases to the unsolved homicide squad. Of those cases, five remain unsolved.