MANY WERE FORCED TO GROW OLD AND DIE ALONE
BEFORE homosexuality was decriminalised in 1993, gay men were forced to ‘live alone, get old alone and die alone’ because of the criminal convictions which restricted their lives.
Many emigrated to more tolerant countries, where they lived without citizenship as they risked deportation if they revealed their ‘criminality’. Karl Hayden, co-founder of the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, said: ‘If they had a conviction, they wouldn’t have been able to apply for citizenship in their host country.
‘They would just be allowed an indefinite visa and that’s what they did. They had nothing. No family. No structure.
‘I know of individuals who left Ireland to live in America and who basically lived alone, who got old alone and who died alone.’
Mr Hayden, who has spent the past eight years campaigning to introduce the scheme to disregard convictions for gay ‘offences’, said he was aware of a tragic case in which two brothers were arrested and charged under the Offences Against the Person Act.
However, they never appeared in court; one fled to San Francisco in the US, while his brother died by suicide.
Mr Hayden said of the brother who moved to the US: ‘They have a postcard he sent when he got to San Francisco in 1976. That was the last time they ever heard from him.
‘That was the impact it had on them. One of them died by suicide and the other left before the court case,’ he said.
‘We think the last of the people charged and convicted was in the late 1980s.
‘They will probably still be around and young enough to be able to come forward and get a disregard. But as the years go by and as we’ve come through Covid, when so many older people lost their lives, we don’t know how many people have died in the past eight years who could have availed of this,’ Mr Hayden added.