Gay students extorted with threat of being ‘outed’ in home countries, Victorian hate crime inquiry hears | Victoria
An inquiry into Victorian hate crimes heard international students from countries where homosexuality was illegal were lured to meetings via gay dating apps before being attacked and extorted with threats of exposure.
Since June 2024, police have detected 95 attacks targeting gay and bisexual men across Victoria, resulting in 42 arrests, Thorne Harbor Health chief executive Chad Hughes told the inquiry on Wednesday.
But Hughes, whose organization runs LGBTIQ+ healthcare, said he believed the “true number” was much higher, with many victims reluctant to come forward due to distrust of the police.
Some also feared their sexuality would be shared with family members overseas and were extorted as a result, according to Jenna Tuke, managing director of Switchboard Victoria, who appeared alongside Hughes at the hearing.
“We have heard many stories about people being contacted after the crime and asked to deposit tens of thousands of dollars into an account – ‘otherwise this video will be shared with everyone in your contacts,’” Tuke said at the hearing.
“We have definitely seen a pattern of overseas students being targeted in countries where homosexuality is illegal.
“[The] The family implications are absolutely huge for these people.
Tuke said one caller to the support service said: “I have until 10pm and they said if I don’t give them this money they will reveal it to everyone I contact, including my family abroad.”
“We hear these types of stories quite often,” he said at the hearing.
“It appears they may be targeting people they deem not ‘out’ and for whom the consequences of coming out as gay or gay would be greater.”
Although each case is different, there are recurring patterns, Tuke said. Victims were often instructed to meet in a public place before being subjected to physical violence, filmed, and in many cases extorted.
He also told the inquiry that most cases of app-based violence occurred in Melbourne’s northern and south-eastern suburbs, but there was also a “cluster” in Fitzroy.
At a recent community forum hosted by Thorne Harbour, Hughes said 12 men disclosed they were attacked after arranging meetings through dating apps.
Only two people reported them to the police and “one regretted it”.
Hughes told the inquiry: “The attacks are deliberate and humiliating. Victims are forced to recite insults on camera and images are shared online to give the perpetrators status with others in the manosphere who are their target audience.”
“Some offenders are as young as 13 years old. These victims were not selected at random. They were specifically targeted because they were thought to be gay or bisexual. These are hate crimes.”
Another witness, David Brown, told the inquest he spoke “on and off” to a person on the dating app for about a month before agreeing to meet “in broad daylight” in August 2024. When he got there he was attacked by two youths.
“This isn’t something that happened to me in a dark, lonely place,” he said. “They came to the park with a knife bigger than the ones you have in your kitchen and pointed it at me… it was just pure hatred.”
Brown said he “couldn’t fault” the police who handled his case, but he “did not receive justice” because one of the teenagers was found guilty without a conviction and the other was not charged.
However, he said they were arrested after three separate attacks “on the same street, again in broad daylight”.
Last year, Guardian Australia reported attacks targeting men through dating apps across the country, and Victoria police confirmed anti-LGBTQ+ influencers were promoting “attack methods” online. The role of “far-right manosphere influencers” forms part of the inquiry’s terms of reference.
Equality Australia’s legal director, Heather Corkhill, told the investigation that similar attacks had also occurred in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
“I spoke to someone in Lebanon who described the exact same type of attack happening there,” he said.
Corkhill told the inquiry that dating apps allowed criminals to identify and reach potential victims with unprecedented ease.
Equality Australia pointed to data from New South Wales, where a dedicated hate crime unit recorded 197 cases of LGBTQA+ hate-related violence between January 2023 and October 2025. Approximately 64% of these crimes were committed by young people.
Deakin University extremism expert Dr. Josh Roose told the inquiry some of the NSW attacks could be described as “Islamic State-inspired”. He said Australia “should not wait for a mass fatality attack” before taking such hate crimes seriously.
