Campaigners have attacked a Sydney judge's comparison of incest and pedophila with homosexuality as “completely unacceptable” and an insult to people who have experienced sexual abuse
Campaigners have attacked a Sydney judge's comparison of incest and pedophila with homosexuality as “completely unacceptable” and an insult to people who have experienced sexual abuse, reports the Star Observer.
District Court Judge Garry Neilson comments arose in the case of a 58-year-old man who is charged with repeatedly raping his younger sister in the early 1980s.
Neilson said that in the same manner as homosexuality was once seen as taboo, “a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available'”.
He went on to say:
“If this was the 50s and you had a jury of 12 men there, which is what you'd invariably have, they would say it's unnatural for a man to be interested in another man or a man being interested in a boy. Those things have gone.”
Talking to the Star Observer, New South Wales Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby policy and project officer Jed Horner said Neilson's comments made an offensive comparison between being gay and sexual offences and were an insult to survivors of sexual abuse.