Is it time to say sorry?
By Aysha Leo and Will Temple
February 27, 2008 12:00am
Article from: NEWS.com.au
* Gay victims tell how violence stained first Mardi Gras
* Want apology from police on eve of 30th anniversary
* Click here for full coverage of Mardi Gras 2008
THE blinding glare of a paddy wagon’s high beams was the first sign the 1978 Mardi Gras celebration had turned bad for gay marcher Peter Murphy.
Through it he could just make out the silhouettes of those around him lying injured on the ground and being laid into by police boots.
In seconds the violence turned on him.
30 years later the trauma is still all too real, with Mr Murphy calling for the apology he never received after being bashed around the walls of an inner-Sydney police room until he was convulsing on the floor.
“They took me along a long corridor in the police station through a U-shaped route into a room and then just beat the hell out of me,” Mr Murphy told NEWS.com.au as part of our 30th anniversary Mardi Gras special.
“There were two police officers who did that – one in particular – bashing me with their fists in the head and saying ‘you’re not so smart now are you’.”
Mr Murphy said he was beaten solidly until a blow to the solar plexus floored him. He was thrown into a solitary cell where he could hear protesters gathered outside chanting his name.
“They tried to break my leg but fortunately the bones didn’t snap,” he said. “I was (literally) [censored] my pants.”
The Mardi Gras had started as a legal pride parade down Sydney’s Oxford St for a few hundred people in commemoration of the Stonewall riots that marked the start of the fight for gay liberation in the US a decade earlier.
But when the marchers arrived at Hyde Park at the bottom of the street police confiscated the sound system.
The gathering, which was now numbered about 2000, started marching towards neighbouring Kings Cross until police blocked two ends of the main thoroughfare - Darlinghurst Rd - and started arresting those involved.
53 marchers – including Peter Murphy – were charged variously with being in an illegal procession, hindering police and resisting police from the night of June 24, 1978.
“I’ll never stop being distressed by it,” Mr Murphy said. “No matter how much I intellectualise – it’s a scar. It’s something that won’t go away – it can’t go away.
“The NSW police should apologise to the gay movement in Sydney for what they did that night because it was a political stunt which was at a high price for people including me.”
Lance Gowland was the driver of the first and only float of the night and was part of the crowd that massed outside Darlinghurst police station.
“We knew that people were being bashed up by the police – we could hear the screams coming from the police station,” Mr Gowland said. “The police were just arresting anyone.”
Witness Diane Minnis said the violence was “amazingly shocking”.
“It was really traumatic because the police just attacked people and grabbed them,” Ms Minnis said. “There was some very heavy stuff going on. People were being picked up and thrown bodily into paddy wagons.
“It was just very violent. I think I really was in shock for a little while after that.”
Another 1978 marcher, Ken Davis, was forced to divest himself of his country and western frock to escape.
“I thought it wise to get out of that,” Mr Davis said. “I realised the danger of being in a frock – which was actually illegal.
“I think they were getting revenge … they wanted revenge on all the people who had taken part in the Mardi Gras.
“I think they just targeted people initially that they saw as fighting back and maybe initially they were more hostile to women.
“We realised immediately after that we’d been part of something that was tremendously exciting and exhilarating and also terrifying that was like a watershed moment in the politics of NSW but also lesbian and gay politics internationally.”
NEWS.com.au is seeking comment from senior police.
Topic: Is it time to say sorry?.....to the GAYS ........... (Read 1070 times)