TNAG-1101-FCO40-1351-Legislation-on-homosexuality-in-Hong-Kong-including--Report--1981 — Page 84

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150.

It should be noted that on 15 December 1979 Logan wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Police after he had entered pleas of guilty to the three counts of gross indecency. The letter was then passed to the Attorney General. Logan stated in his letter:-

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"All of the officers handling my case, and especially Messrs. Brooks, Quinn and MacKillop have carried out their duties meticulously but always in a considerate and tactful way."

The Attorney General said in the evidence that he did not act on the complaints by Mrs. Elliott and that of Lindsay's, for the following reasons:

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"Well, I was very conscious of the fact that neither Lindsay nor Mrs. Elliott were prepared to themselves make a complaint to CAPO. I was with Lindsay in particular, conscious of the view that he was badly motivated towards Mr. Quinn; he was very bitter about his own case and I'm not seeking to blame him for that, but it was a fact that he was very bitter about it. Mrs. Elliott had also quite clearly, a motivation against the Police and I had in the back of my mind that the new Attorney General, who didn't know much about Hong Kong, was being manoeuvred into being used to make a complaint and lend the authority of his name and his office to a complaint in this particular area. I had also received the letter which we read a moment or two ago from the fact that in those days the Secretary of the local Bar about the prosecution of Lindsay, saying there was nothing wrong, I'd been assured by Mr. Reid that the allegation of perverting the course of justice in that case had nothing in it; I had seen this letter which had been sent to me from the Police about the SIU, and I had been assured that no damage had in fact been done, because both Mr. Lindsay and Mrs. Elliott said that the person who was asked to do these things had not done them. Now, against that background I was also aware of the fact that ever since the 1st September, Mr. Quinn and this particular Unit had come under the personal control of the Deputy Commissioner of Police himself and the D.C.I. that they were aware of allegations made at the end of August/early September about them, and no doubt would be supervising them very closely and looking into it, and I confess rightly or wrongly, I now know wrongly, in the back of my mind I had the thought that no doubt this allegation related to the period prior to Mr. Moor taking control at the beginning of September.'

152. Did the Attorney General know at that time who the potential “victim” was? Apparently he did. The Attorney General said in evidence that at about that time, he had mentioned the Fulton matter to Mr. Moor and the Chief Secretary, and he was made aware that the potential victim was John MacLennan.74 Apparently it did not ring an alarm bell in the Attorney General's mind after he realized that the allegation of an attempted "set-up" related to a man whose prosecution he had recently authorized (on 3 December 1979) but which had not as yet taken place. There is no evidence that the Attorney General ever alerted Mr. Macdougall the DPP or Mr. Duffy to the Fulton complaint when they were dealing with the MacLennan prosecution. There is equally no evidence indicating that the DPP and Mr. Duffy should have known about the Fulton complaint without being told by the Attorney General.

153.

Conclusion. To sum up, the Attorney General's explanations for not acting on the complaints made by Lindsay and Mrs. Elliott, either by referring it to the CAPO or alerting the DPP or Mr. Duffy in relation to the MacLennan prosecution are as follows:-

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(a) he was sceptical of the motives of Lindsay and Mrs. Elliott partly because they refused to report to CAPO

themselves;

(b) he did not believe the allegation was true, and even if it was true, no damage had in fact been done as Fulton

refused to comply with Brooks and Quinn's instructions;

(c) he mistakenly thought that the Fulton matter took place before 1 September 1979 (i.e. prior to Mr. Moor taking personal control of the Unit) and had therefore been dealt with by his letter of 31 August 1979; he did not know that Quinn was never reprimanded;

(d) the fact that Logan had entered pleas of guilty and written a letter praising SIU lent some weight to the Attorney General's belief that the SIU had conducted their investigations properly and the witnesses involved (three of them were common witnesses in both the Logan and MacLennan cases) were telling the truth; and

(e) the Attorney General was under the wrong impression (Brooks told Mr. Macdougall who repeated it to the Attorney General) that MacLennan was not targetted but his name surfaced in the course of the investigation into Logan (in fact "John" and "Colin" came up together: see under Peter above). He also understood that Quinn was not involved in taking any of the statements in the MacLennan investigation. He therefore believed that it was unlikely that MacLennan was "victimized".

I accept the Attorney General's explanations for not referring the complaints made by Lindsay and Mrs. Elliott to the CAPO. However the existence of such allegations, whether true or not, should have caused him some concern as to the propriety of SIU investigation into MacLennan.

155.

The mere fact that Fulton refused to "set-up" MacLennan did not rule out the possibility that other person(s) might have been asked to do the same thing, and that they might have complied. Having been previously made aware by Mr. Moor (on 30 November 1979) of the Yuen Long incident and of the political repercussions of prosecuting

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See Attorney General's evidence, Transcript page 11941.

See Attorney General's evidence, Transcript pages 11566-11567.