Australian Man Jailed in Fiji for Gay Sex
The
Advocate, April 7, 2005
A gay Australian man will serve two years in prison for
admitting to having private, consensual sex with a Fiji man, according to the
Australian Associated Press news service. In a statement at the sentencing
hearing on Tuesday, Fiji magistrate Syed Muhktar Shah said the acts committed
by Australian tourist Thomas Maxwell McCoskar, 55, and Fijian Dhirendra Nandan,
23, were “something so disgusting that it would make any person vomit.”
The two men reportedly met and had sex during the Easter
holiday in March in the Fiji city of Nadi, according to the AAP, which cited a
report in the Fiji Times.
The magistrate told McCoskar, a retired university
professor, “With you being a former lecturer, you should have known that
such indecent acts are illegal.” He added, “If you wanted to have fun, you
should have stayed in Australia instead of trying to come to Fiji and exploit
our young boys.”
Gay sex carries a jail sentence of up to 14 years in
Fiji.
According to the Fiji Times, the two men admitted their
actions in court and said they had done nothing wrong. Nandan threatened to
commit suicide if he were imprisoned, but it was not clear from the report
whether Nandan received the same two-year sentence as McCoskar. The magistrate
told Nandan he would have done well to consider the “shamefulness of the
crime” beforehand.
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