‘He was nineteen years old and murdered a few days ago. His death was made to look like suicide.’
‘Not the boy in the—’
‘Yes,’ Kim snapped, beginning to get annoyed at the reference.
‘And it was definitely murder?’
Kim nodded. ‘He’d been speaking to a counsellor, Megan Shaw.’
‘I know Meg. So he had problems with his sexuality?’
‘Originated from his parents. Deep-rooted by the looks of it.’
He nodded. ‘Happens a lot.’
‘Really?’ she asked.
‘Inspector, do you know what the DSM manual is?’
‘Some kind of medical journal?’ she tried. She’d definitely heard of it.
‘It is the bible used for classifying mental illness.’
‘Okay.’
‘Care to guess when homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness?’
‘Was it ever perceived to be one?’ Bryant asked.
He nodded. ‘And remained so until 1973.’
‘When it was removed?’ she asked.
‘No. It was changed to sexual orientation disturbance, until 1980.’
‘And then removed?’ she asked.
‘No, it was changed to ego-dystonic homosexuality.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘A new version of the manual is released this year, and for the first time there is no diagnostic category that can be applied to people on their sexual orientation. So, finally, we’re not mentally ill. Woohoo for us.’
Kim took a second to digest this. How was this only being acknowledged now?
He continued. ‘Richard Von Krafft-Ebing was a German-Austrian psychiatrist and one of the founders of scientific sexology. He became a proponent of the sickness model of homosexuality and believed that treatment came from the prevention of masturbating.’
‘He thought he could change someone’s sexuality?’ she asked, aghast.
Cliff frowned. ‘He along with many others both past and present.’
‘What?’
‘Have either of you never heard of conversion therapy?’ he asked.
Kim shook her head, as did Bryant.
‘You two really need more gay people in your lives.’