Gay couple Dennis Jay Mayer and John
Robert Hart, who were arrested and jailed in the Caribbean this week,
say they were humiliated by officials, they AP reported.
Mayer and Hart, who live in Palm
Springs, California and have been together 17 years, were escorted
off the gay cruise ship Celebrity Summit when it docked Wednesday
morning at Dominica, which is among several Caribbean islands where
gay sex is illegal.
Police said the men were arrested for
having public sex on the ship. The men have denied the charges, but
conceded that they were “partially clothed.”
“The total experience was
horrendous,” Mayer, a 53-year-old retired deputy sheriff told the
AP. “They told us that they did not like us, that they did not
like gay people.”
After being ejected from the ship,
police interrogated the men for four hours.
“He said: 'You're being arrested for
being gay. We're arresting you for the crime of buggery,'” Mayer
said. “He said that other people said that we were engaging in
homosexual sex. He repeated that several times. I told him I didn't
know why they would say that. I wasn't doing that.”
“The treatment was inhumane. We were
detained for approximately 26 hours, and 19 of those locked in a
cement cell, which had no running water, no toilet, no lights. It
stunk of feces and urine. It was infested with cockroaches, ants and
bugs.”
“They paraded many people by to look
in on us as if we were some type of animal, which was quite
humiliating,” he said. “People got great joy in the pleasure of
taunting us.”
The men met with an angry mob on their
way to the courthouse on Thursday.
“They were chanting and banging on
the police vehicle. … Both my partner and I really feared for our
safety.”
The men pleaded guilty to indecent
exposure and were ordered to pay a nearly $900 fine by Chief
Magistrate Evaline Baptiste, who called them “rogues and
vagabonds.”