‘Hate Crimes against Lesbians and Gay Men in New South Wales: Accumulated Knowledge of Victimisation via Five Reports’

Abstract

'Hate crime’ was a term adopted for crimes committed against members of the lesbian and gay community in New South Wales in the 1990s. Acts of violence and harassment against members of this community was not a new discovery, though the application of the term hate crime assisted activist to build and govern through ‘community’ by arguing that this type of crime was different to that experienced by the ‘general’ community. Furthermore, such violence was used as a means to claim the right to be protected from crime. This paper examines lesbian and gay activism around hate crime. In particular it reviews the findings of reports on harassment and violence against members of this community produced in New South Wales by combining various key results from activist and state bureaux surveys into a single data set.