“DIFFERENT SCENE”

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“DIFFERENT SCENE” Article  August 8, 2011 by John Marrs

Kathy Gilleran was enjoying her life as a recently retired New York Police officer when a telephone call changed everything. Her eldest son, Aeryn Gillern, 34, was working as a researcher for the United Nations and living in Vienna, Austria. As well as having two masters degrees and being an accomplished athlete, Aeryn was twice nominated Mr Gay Austria and lived with his long-term partner.


Then suddenly, he disappeared.

When Kathy flew to Vienna to try and discover what had happened to Aeryn, she hadn’t anticipated the police’s homophobic accusations, slurs, lies and bigotry. Regularly fobbed off and stonewalled, Kathy soon found hole after hole in the police’s ‘watertight’ theory that Aeryn committed ‘spontaneous suicide.’

But while many parents might have eventually given up trying to discover the truth in the face of such oppression, the Austrian authorities didn’t count on Kathy’s resilience or her determination.

Four years later and with Aeryn’s body still yet to be found, an emotional new documentary about her search, Gone, is being seen around the world at film festivals.


Kathy

Different Scene talks to Kathy about her fight for the truth.

When did you discover Aeryn had gone missing?
It was Hallowe’en 2007 and I got a call from a friend at the police department where I’d worked before I retired. She told me I needed to go home, and I asked why. She started crying and said: “Kathy, Aeryn’s missing.” Panicking over his disappearance, my son’s partner Tasi had lost my number, and called the place where I used to work. So I raced home and there was a message on my answering machine telling me I needed to call one of Aeryn’s work colleagues. He said Aeryn was missing and they were concerned as it was unlike him.

What was going through your mind at that time?
Initially I was just thinking ‘Oh Aeryn, what are you doing, where are you?’ and that there was a miscommunication somewhere. That lasted half an hour. As soon as I saw my younger son, Rahman, something inside told me it wasn’t a miscommunication. Aeryn had gone. I tried to stay upbeat but I felt a hollowness. I just didn’t feel him. I tried to fight it. My mind went back and forth from police officer to mom, but the police officer in me reminded me he’d been gone for two days, and it was not going to be good.

A few days later, you were in Vienna. What was your first encounter with the police like?
They were like the Keystone Cops (The 1920s comic silent movie characters). The extent of their search was to look under Aeryn’s bed and pull out his sofa bed like he’d been hiding under it for four days. In America, police officers take care of each other. I showed them my police badge but they shrugged like it was no big deal.

What was your second meeting with them like?
They said Aeryn was gay and he was HIV+. The latter shocked me. Then they told me he was emotionally unbalanced, thus he committed spontaneous suicide in the Danube canal. Even the translator thought that was ridiculous. I asked how did they know all this or that he was HIV+, and they shrugged their shoulders and said ‘we just do.’


What’s the official version of what happened to Aeryn?
The police said he’d visited the Kaiserbrundl gay sauna, and was sat listening to music on his MP3 player when somebody accidentally bumped into him. They said he panicked, ran naked through the sauna, out the door into the streets, naked, and eventually committed suicide in the Danube.

Why don’t you believe that?
There are many, many reasons. Aeryn was in a great place in his life, which is why the suicide theory doesn’t make sense. It’s not just me saying that, it’s everyone who knew him from his friends to his co-workers and even his doctor.

Why did police think he’d drowned?
They told me a fisherman reported seeing a body in the Danube, so they put boats in the water, had divers in there, dredged it and had a canine unit searching. All of that from start to finish took 30 minutes. Miraculously, everyone was able to get there within seconds and do all that super quick and then leave. Then I found out they didn’t do any of it. And they claimed there were no other witnesses.

What happened to his belongings in the sauna?
He left his belongings in a bag, which the police then gave me. Inside his bag I came across lab results that said he was HIV-. They police had told me he was HIV+. Despite having proof he wasn’t, they still refused to believe he did not have HIV. They think all gays are HIV+ and are emotionally unbalanced. Also, his Mp3 player, which was strapped to his arm when he ran out, was also with his possessions.

It must have been so frustrating to hear such obvious contradictions…
It was but I was afraid to lose my temper. The police had the upper hand. United Nations tried to give me hints to help the police listen to me, like to be unemotional and not move my hands a lot when I spoke because they don’t like that. So I put my hands under my thighs and kept my head down and was as non-confrontational as possible so they wouldn’t be angrier or nastier than they were. Obviously it didn’t work.

Did you ask the Kaiserbrundl what happened the night Aeryn was there?
They said that night, they called the police twice around 10pm because a fight had broken out and Aeryn had been injured. They said they called an ambulance but my son ran out. However, the police said he’d been seen in the Danube 6.50pm not 10pm, which is a huge time difference. The police also said there were no emergency calls made at all that evening and no ambulance went. Either the police or the sauna was lying.

If he’d run when the police said he had, surely someone must have seen a naked man in the street?
At 6.50pm Aeryn would have run through a huge pedestrian area, four or five lanes of traffic with trams and horse drawn carriages, through other streets and a theatre district before jumping into the Danube. But the police said there were no witnesses.

None at all?
No, but an investigative journalist discovered two who had given a statement to the police when they read a story about Aeryn’s disappearance in the newspaper. They say they saw a man running naked running like crazy. He stopped and turned around and they said they were scared to death when they saw the fear on his face. They thought he was running for his life. Then he took off again. The police later claimed they told me about the witnesses – but that was another lie. It’s a game of cat and mouse. If I can catch them out and disprove them, they’ll never admit they’re wrong but they’ll change the story instead.

Was any of this caught on CCTV?
There isn’t as much CCTV in the USA as there is in Europe, so I didn’t think about it. It was only while on a trip to Vienna with the documentary crew that we realised there was CCTV in one of the intersections police say Aeryn ran across. The sauna also had video cameras. I asked the police at three meetings ‘did you get the tapes?’ They said it wasn’t necessary to get them because nothing happened.
Then the sauna denied they had video cameras, even though I’d seen them myself when the manager gave me a tour of the building.

What do you think happened the night Aeryn disappeared?
I think that night, there was an incident, probably a fight, at the sauna. Aeryn wasn’t a fighter – he was extremely non-confrontational. I think he witnessed something and was scared to death. I think he heard something about the police being called, and he was scared of them. I can see him running but I’m not saying the police killed him because I can’t prove that. But I think the police saw him and chased him. Whatever happened at the Danube, I don’t know. Maybe in a struggle he jumped in to get away from them or was thrown into it. But he did not commit suicide. Either way, Aeryn was dispensable.

Why is this story so hard to get to the bottom of?
Many people have told me the Kaiserbrundl is the oldest gay sauna in the world, sitting in the richest part of Vienna. Movers and shakers in the Austrian political scene and even the top brass in the police use it. Clients include people in power who could have a lot to lose if people knew they frequented it. So it has protection of some sorts.



Would police have been so reluctant to help you if Aeryn wasn’t gay?

Had Aeryn been straight and had disappeared from a hotel spa it would be a different story. There would be no homophobic slurs and some more compassion. However, there would still be some resistance from the police because of Xenophobia.

How did the film Gone come about?
I threw myself into work for six months, then realised I’d been in hiding. So I did some interviews and filmmaker Gretchen Morning saw one and was touched by it. She came to my house with a film crew and interviewed me and that’s how it started.

What was your reaction to seeing the film for the first time?
I was numb. Then a couple of days later, I couldn’t stop crying. I just fell apart. Everything I tried to suppress just came to the surface again.

How will Gone help in your search for the truth?
I hope the more people who see it, the more pressure there will be on the Austrian police and my government to do something. Gone hasn’t been shown in Austria yet but we’re hoping to approach the European film festivals this autumn. Every time it’s shown, it’s another chink in the wall and eventually I hope that wall will fall and we’ll get some answers or someone will get a conscience. I know that people know what happened to my son.

Will you ever give up?
No, I will just keep on fighting. I will keep going back to Vienna and each time, I’ll make sure the police and the sauna knows I’m there. I will continue to keep holding a vigil opposite the Kaiserbrundl. Because I’m not going away. I am not going away.

To read more about Gone and Kathy’s story, visit http://gone-film.com and www.aeryngillern.com

 

Gone: What Happened to Aeryn Gillern?