MILES PARKS, HOST:
The Australian state of Tasmania is introducing a landmark reparations program to compensate men who've been prosecuted under laws that criminalized homosexuality. Kristina Kukolja reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Any move to leave to the line up...
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Gay law reform. Gay law reform. Gay law reform.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: ...You refuse to leave this area. You are now under arrest for trespassing.
KRISTINA KUKOLJA, BYLINE: That's a police officer arresting activists who were distributing a petition calling for homosexuality to be decriminalized in Tasmania in 1988. Among those detained was Rodney Croome, then only 24 years old.
RODNEY CROOME: Our former antigay laws were serious criminal laws that carried the harshest penalty in the Western world, 21 years in jail.
KUKOLJA: In 1997, Tasmania became the last of Australia's six states to decriminalize male same-sex relationships, many years after other parts of the country did. Three decades on, it's the first to offer compensation to men who were criminalized for being gay or dressing in women's clothes. Croome says those affected have suffered lifelong harm.
CROOME: Many lost their jobs because of that. They were ostracized from their families. Some lost their relationships. We know that some took their own lives because of this, and many moved interstate to try and get away from the stigma that the conviction laid on their shoulders.
KUKOLJA: At least 100 men are known to have been charged or convicted under these laws. Human rights law professor at Monash University, Paula Gerber, was tasked with working out the level of compensation for those men who are still alive.
PAULA GERBER: Until you know and understand what someone suffered, how do you quantify what amount of redress they should receive?
KUKOLJA: Gerber says the Tasmanian state government initially proposed to pay each of them the equivalent of around $3,000 U.S., about two weeks of average weekly earnings in today's terms.
GERBER: And I said, look, that is salt in the wound. That really is insulting, and you'd be better off doing nothing than doing that.
KUKOLJA: The state government accepted her recommendations and will now pay up to $50,000 U.S. for individual claims, closer to nine months of average earnings before tax. Gerber says depending on whether they were only charged or convicted and sentenced and spent time in prison.
GERBER: You're trying to come up with an amount that will - as much as money can - make the person whole, make them feel like there's closure, that they've received justice.
KUKOLJA: But will that be enough to repair the injustice? Ruth Forrest chaired the state parliamentary committee that designed the reparations program.
RUTH FORREST: You can never fully compensate or take away the pain, the trauma, the suffering and the horror that those men experienced. But it does say to those men that we are sorry this happened.
KUKOLJA: Rodney Croome, who now works for the advocacy group Equality Tasmania, says the reparations program should just be the first step.
CROOME: The decision was to go ahead as quickly as possible because some of the men are very elderly now. I know two or three who are in their 90s, and they shouldn't have to wait any longer.
KUKOLJA: But Croome says it fails to address the men's individual experiences, some of whom could be entitled to even higher damages.
CROOME: I'd like to see those who were persecuted under our former laws individually assessed rather than given a fixed amount, regardless of what they endured. I'd also like to see families have access to financial redress.
KUKOLJA: The latter, fears Croome, will be a much more legally difficult task. For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne, Australia.
(SOUNDBITE OF RENE AUBRY'S "WATER FALLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.