We need your help.

The Downing Centre needs a new name.

As Australia’s leading LGBTQ+ law firm, Dowson Turco Lawyers has been deeply involved in advocacy for the LGBTQIA+community across many areas.

To continue this important work, we need your help to rename the Downing Centre court complex. This is because the Downing Centre is named after a former NSW Attorney General, Reg Downing, who was responsible for sending gay men and trans people, through criminalisation and persecution, to Cooma gaol.

Why?

Reopened in 1957 with a specific purpose of incarcerating men for “homosexual offences”, Cooma gaol is known to have been used for human testing, with the objective of eradicating homosexuality. Cooma gaol is believed to have been the only known homosexual prison in the world, but it was also, to add to the homosexual stigma, a prison for heterosexual sex offenders.

Former prison officer, Les Strzelecki, who is now 66, told Garry Nunn at the BBC that he was a custodial services officer at the prison in 1979, and later set up the Corrective Services Museum in Cooma. He says homosexual prisoners were marked with “N/A'': being non-association with mainstream prisons” because of their vulnerability to attacks. 

But Mr Cliff New told Mr Nunn the prison was established for other reasons. Mr New is published on the Audible podcast series “The Greatest Menace” saying that psychologists and psychiatrists were "coming in all the time" after the jail reopened in 1957.  He says "They were trying to get them on the 'right' track… They reckoned they could cure them."

Historical documents suggest Attorney Reg Downing took credit for establishing the prison. Garry Nunn’s research found that Attorney Downing expressed pride in the project, and told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1957 that “Nowhere in Europe or America did I find any prisons where homosexuals were separated from other prisoners.” Mr Nunn reports that a 1958 press statement from Attorney Downing names Cooma prison as “the only penal institution in the world, so far as is known, devoted specifically to the detention of homosexual offenders”.

Attorney Downing said in 1955 that pressure from NSW Police Commissioner, Colin Delaney, who, Attorney Downing said felt “that remedial legislation [was] an urgent necessity to combat the evil”. Laws included the criminal offence of “soliciting” a man. At the time, the crime of buggery carried a 14-year sentence. 

In 1958, the NSW Government announced a committee of inquiry into the “cause and treatment of homosexuality”. It said that the intention was to employ “experts in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, penology and social and moral welfare”.

A statement of the NSW Government at the time names Cooma prison as “a special institution for convicted homosexual offenders” which will “facilitate the investigation”.

Garry Nunn reports that once a "scientific evaluation of the problem and possible solution" was been found, Attorney Downing is quoted as saying, “the government considers that the problem must be attacked with vigour”. 

Change is Needed

We appreciate that changing the name of government buildings is topical in today’s world, because minority groups who historically were victims of institutionalised discrimination and alienation now pursue truth and justice.

But the fact is many members of the LGBTQIA+ community work in the legal profession, or work withing the Downing Centre courts precinct, and consider the Downing Centre their workplace. The Downing Centre’s staff, and the NSW Sherriff’s Office comprise people from all walks of life, including the LGBTQIA+ community. And, of course, the LGBTQIA+ community is, like any other community, a user of the Downing Centre Local and District Courts.

Let's change the name of the Downing Centre so that it does not honour someone who persecuted gay men and trans people.