Buckle up true crime fans because I’m about to let you in on one of the most fucked Aussie crime podcasts you’ve heard in a while. It’s from the brilliant mind of Walkley nominated queer journo Patrick Abboud, and it’s gonna leave you sleepless.
For three years Abboud has spent time investigating the secrets of a “gay only” prison that has been hidden in rural NSW. It’s a dark part of Australia’s history that, until now, has remained uncovered.
In his new Audible true crime podcast titled The Greatest Menace, Abboud investigates how this prison in Cooma tried to find cures for homosexuality, testing out treatments on queer prisoners.
It sounds fucked because it is fucked, and it’s only made more intense by the fact that Abboud is gay himself. Couldn’t be me, I’d cry the entire time I was making discoveries.
We spoke to Abboud about his queer true crime poddy and the hardships that went into making it.
“As someone who identifies as LGBTQI+, was it difficult to uncover these things that happened to queer people?”
Patrick Abboud: “I’ve been reporting queer stories for a decade. It’s a privilege to be able to share untold stories from my own community and I love being immersed in the genuinely diverse lives of our queer fam. But this gay prison story and what we uncover over the course of our three-year investigation had a profound impact on me.
It’s impossible to deny how hated we’ve been, how unjust laws of the time were, how people’s lives were destroyed. Throughout the three years, I’ve lived and breathed this gay prison story. It’s also unlocked years of struggle for my own Palestinian/Lebanese family coming to terms with me being gay. It’s something that I’ve found very hard to talk about until now.
Alongside exposing what the former NSW Government and NSW Police were doing to queer people, the podcast goes deep with my family and it’s incredibly revealing on a personal level. It’s daunting that we’re finally able to reveal the truth behind the gay prison in this tiny Australian town for the first time and I’ve finally got the balls to tell my family story publicly. I hope it helps someone else going through similar experiences. Emotionally it’s the toughest story I’ve ever endured but it’s only emboldened me to keep amplifying the voices from our beautiful queer world.”
“How did you first stumble upon the well-hidden ‘gay prison’ in regional NSW?”
Abboud: “I don’t want to give too much away because it’ll spoil the adventure but let’s just say I got a tip-off from a colleague who heard a rumour from a friend of an acquaintance that Australia used to be home to a gay prison. Supposedly, a prison was built in the 50s specifically to incarcerate gay men as some sort of human experiment. There go the next three years of my life investigating the truth behind it.
Our investigation into what happened inside reveals the full story for the first time. It’s an eight-part Audible original queer true crime journey that takes you from underground nightclubs to hidden sex haunts, to remote parts of New Zealand and England. I find myself entangled in a police cover-up, a case of wrongful conviction and this human experiment that didn’t go to plan. At the centre of it all was a covert government operation to eradicate ‘the greatest menace to society’: homosexuality.”
“With the current happenings in Aussie politics today, how important do you believe a story like this is?”
Abboud: “The timing of our Audible Original true crime podcast series being released is uncanny, right at the time the federal government tried to pass the Religious Discrimination Bill. It goes a long way to put in context the shame, the hurt, and the struggle that is still being experienced today by young queer, trans and non-gender binary people especially.
Reading the headlines on the day The Greatest Menace was released, I couldn’t help but sometimes feel it’s still the 50s, 60s when the NSW Government was trying to ‘eradicate’ homosexuality from the face of the earth. I’ve discovered stories from every pocket of Australia, especially during my time hosting the TV broadcast of the Mardi Gras for years and I’ve felt the lasting impact of decades of discrimination. But today I feel it stronger than ever with this rubbish bill. The discrimination, the homophobia, the transphobia is still so unbelievably pervasive today in the halls of power and that has to stop right now.
Yet again, it’s a harsh time for our community – and I hope our series goes some way to applying pressure on the current government to think about the devastating impact of their words and actions.”
“What was the most shocking discovery you made on this journey?”
Abboud: “When I started asking people about the gay prison a lot of people told me it was always about protecting gay prisoners from the rest of the prison population. The big twist came when we discovered records that reveal what the government’s actual rationale was for segregating gay prisoners in one prison and it was something far more sinister. I don’t want to give too much away but when I saw details of the government’s plan in front of me I was floored. Discovering the government operation to find a “treatment” or to “cure” homosexuality is one of many revelations that still sends shivers through my core.”
“Which interview during the podcast moved you the most?”
Abboud: “Interviewing my mother in relation to what we uncovered, alongside our own personal family journey around my coming out, is an experience that will forever be impressed upon my heart. My mother is the most incredible person I’ve ever known but our relationship has been fraught with pain. This project unlocked that struggle and we both bare our souls. It’s once in a lifetime this happens for any storyteller where a story connects so deeply to your own life – it’s literally life-changing.”
“What did this journey help you to discover about your own identity as a queer person in Australia?”
Abboud: “These strange connections to my own personal life just kept appearing during the course of the investigation and it opened a whole new conversation within my family and their struggle with me being gay. People’s lives were destroyed and there’s still a lasting impact on younger LGBTQIA+ communities now because of what happened in our past. The fact that this story has been buried, covered up, hidden, forgotten about… explains so much around why we’ve had to fight and sadly are still fighting to be seen as we are, to be treated equally and to have the same opportunities afforded to us as anyone.
This project has been really hard at times, with constant dead ends and doors closed in my face but I’m so happy we persevered with it and I can put it out into the world at a time where it’s so very much needed.
Coming out on the other side of a very long investigative process now, I’ve never been more passionate about putting our queer stories on screens and in earholes everywhere. I hope that at the very least the Government authorities who are responsible acknowledge what happened. Survivors want an apology and that’s the least of what they deserve.”
You can listen to Patrick Abboud’s true crime podcast ‘The Greatest Menace: Inside the Gay Prison Experiment’ for free on Audible now.
