Link between Disappearances and Gay Community

[MariaRubia]

There's an interesting piece in Dominican Today where the police are making a link between the young men who are subsequently found to be members of the LGBT community. Evidently families are not mentioning to the police that their sons are gay/ bisexual and this is hampering investigations.

The stigmas that hinder investigations of missing people in DR

<p>Not providing all the necessary information for the police investigation is one of the challenges facing the investigation of some cases of missing persons. Without naming any specific cases of recent disappearances, a source from the National Police involved in the investigation told Diario...

dominicantoday.com

I keep noticing reports of missing people, usually men in their 20's and 30's, and was thinking how terrible this must be for the families. The police are saying that "some" of the individuals involved are gay, and that there has been a high risk of murders and violent assaults against gay men who pick people up on Grindr. And I read another piece recently which said that some people were putting fake profiles onto these sites, luring gay men to sex dates and then attacking them.

DR has always been incredibly tolerant of homosexuality, at least compared with most other Caribbean countries. But it seems that there is still a lot of danger out there for members of this community, compounded by the fact that nobody seems to want to talk about it.

 

[Kipling333]

Hardly news when minority groups , especially homosexuals have been at risk for hundreds of years . In Australia and in the UK there are two government enquiries taking place at present relating to gay deaths in the 1970s. Recently in RD there was a well reported murder of a gay American who was murdered within Casa de Campo after using an internet site to meet his killers and in SD there have been numerous well reported murders of gay men the most sensational being the murder of a gay American accused of giving AIDS to his sex partner who was reported to be a gay prostitute .

 

[JD Jones]

There are lots of instances reported on social media where gay sex workers and especially transexuals who try to blackmail or increase their price to men who meet with them thinking the target will capitulate and pay them off; instead they get murdered.

 

[MariaRubia]

Hardly news when minority groups , especially homosexuals have been at risk for hundreds of years . In Australia and in the UK there are two government enquiries taking place at present relating to gay deaths in the 1970s. Recently in RD there was a well reported murder of a gay American who was murdered within Casa de Campo after using an internet site to meet his killers and in SD there have been numerous well reported murders of gay men the most sensational being the murder of a gay American accused of giving AIDS to his sex partner who was reported to be a gay prostitute .

I think attitudes towards LGBT in the UK have moved on a lot, probably a lot more so than in the US to be honest. It's now unusual to see an advert on TV in the UK that doesn't have an LGBT couple in it somewhere. Even the big banks have billboard adverts featuring LGBT couples. The UK football team are going to be wearing rainbow armbands when they play in the world cup in Qatar in protest against Qatar's policy on homosexuality and the fact that the world cup is being played in a country with such intolerant attitudes to homosexuality is being constantly commented on in the UK media and discussed in parliament.

By contrast, in DR whilst it's acknowledged and accepted that some people are LGBT, it is hushed up. The carnival was chock full of gay guys as far as I could tell, but the Santo Domingo gay pride parade had a tiny amount of people in it because that involved them putting their hands up and saying they are gay. And this leads to a whole series of problems like we are talking about in this thread.

 

[DR fan1990]

There's a phenomenon in DR called "buggaron" which is the Dominican equivalent of "gay for pay", meaning Dominican straight men who occasionnaly engage in prostitution with gay expats and gay tourists (never with gay Dominicans though) STRICTLY for financial gain or otherwise material benefits.
They usually hangout in tourist spots, late at night.

When things go south, they get violent and murder the gay foreigner.

OR they create a fake profile on gay dating apps: passing as gay with the intention to meet up and rob the actual (unsuspecting) gay men.

 

[MariaRubia]

There's a phenomenon in DR called "buggaron" which is the Dominican equivalent of "gay for pay", meaning Dominican straight men who occasionnaly engage in prostitution with gay expats and gay tourists (never with gay Dominicans though) STRICTLY for financial gain or otherwise material benefits.
They usually hangout in tourist spots, late at night.

When things go south, they get violent and murder the gay foreigner.

OR they create a fake profile on gay dating apps: passing as gay with the intention to meet up and rob the actual (unsuspecting) gay men.

Yes, that's another issue and when a gay tourist is murdered there's usually a buggaron / sanky panky / call them what you will behind it. I guess they're the male equivolent of a dodgy chica who murders an old man.

But in this case we're talking about gay Dominicans who are being murdered, presumably by other Dominicans, and nobody wanting to talk about it.