This is honestly a pretty tough topic to approach. My first reaction on reading about this was pure fucking outrage. Queer spaces are meant to be refuges from the discomfort and (at times) danger of the outside world, places where queer people can be themselves without fear of persecution or humiliation.
For someone to invade one of these spaces and commit an act so twisted, so specifically designed to cause injury and disfigurement is truly heinous, and to think of them avoiding any meaningful punishment is absolutely disheartening and infuriating.
In a ruling in the Paramatta Local Court, 62-year-old Hengky Irawan was released on a good behaviour bond for charges that included administering poison with the intent to cause injury and malicious damage, after his lawyers argued that he should be tried under the Mental Health Act.
Irawan was charged in late August after entering Sydney gay and bi sex club Aarows with a knife and hydrochloric acid. He was caught when he set off an alarm while trying to sabotage a lubricant dispenser.
The ruling was made after his lawyer submitted a report from both his GP and psychologist to the effect that he was suffering from mental illness and had undergone an “irrational, uncharacteristic episode”, leading him to attempt to sabotage the dispenser as revenge for being kicked out earlier in the year.
The magistrate said she was not satisfied it was a hate crime:
“It was directed towards patrons at the nightclub because he felt aggrieved about being kicked out earlier in the year, not about their sexual orientation.”
Fundamentally, as a society we should be striving to rehabilitate those who commit crimes to the point that they are no longer a threat to society, not just punish them over and over again as they re-offend, so if better mental healthcare is what Irawan needs, then that’s definitely the correct course of action.
But at the same time, it’s hard not to feel like someone managed to pull off an attack on the queer community and just get away with it.
Fuck.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Aarows.
