For months, flyers have been appearing in the city of Perth, featuring photos of LGBTQ+ Australians and falsely accusing them of child abuse and other crimes. Authorities still don’t know who is behind them.

The flyers, which have been dropped in mailboxes in the Western Australian (WA) capital, include no details about who is producing and distributing them, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ABC News.

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Images of the flyers published by ABC News (with photos and names redacted) show the vile messages. One described a Perth resident as the “architect of the chemical castration and torture of h***y street kids.” Another claimed its target would “hook your kids on meth” and “make them suck ****.”

Gregory Helleren, a board member of Pride WA, has also been the target of one of the flyers, which falsely accuses him of traveling “to South East Asia to have sex with BOYS.”

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Helleren told The Guardian that he’s been aware of the flyer since last year, but only became aware that his own photo was featured on one when his brother told him about it in January. According to ABC News, he reported the flyer to police the following month, only to have uniformed officers appear at his home to question him about the sordid allegations.

“They were unaware of the reports made by me or others,” he told the outlet, “and they just wanted me to basically deny the allegations.”

“I’ve been quite disturbed by it. Not for my on personal safety or reputation but more that this is something that is still happening all these years after gay law reform,” Helleren told The Guardian. “The other flyers I’ve seen … the claims are outrageous, but they’re plausible enough that your average person looks at it and … goes ‘maybe they do traffic drugs.’”

A spokesperson for WA Police confirmed to The Guardian that they “have received several reports relating to these flyers and inquiries are ongoing.” They also urged anyone who has been depicted on the fliers to report them.

“The best bet is to report it first, and there may also be civil remedies available to you, around defamation and other issues that you can take as well,” WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told ABC Radio Perth. “They’re all individual messages and obviously I can’t speak to the truth of them without a proper investigation. So I think the first thing is report it to police.”

But as Helleren explained to OUTinPerth, under the state’s current laws his only option would be a civil defamation lawsuit — and he doesn’t even know who is responsible for the flyers.

“If we had stronger anti-vilification laws dealing with not just religion, but race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality — that would make it easier,” he told the outlet.

Helleren told ABC News that the Perth’s LGBTQIA+ Advisory Group is urging the city’s mayor to contact the WA Attorney General to demand stronger anti-vilification protections for the LGBTQ+ community.

Australia’s anti-vilification laws prohibit public acts, including speech and conduct, that incite hate towards certain protected classes. But laws vary from state to state. As both LGBTQ+ organization Rainbow Futures WA’s Misty Farquhar and Equality Australia legal director Heather Corkhill told The Guardian, the state’s hate crimes laws do not include explicit protections for the LGBTQ+ community.

“Targeting rainbow families online, inciting violence against trans people, or threatening gay men with flyers is unacceptable – and it demands a strong, coordinated response,” Corkhill said in a statement.

The latest flyers are not the first to target Australia’s LGBTQ+ community. Around the country’s 2017 referendum on marriage equality, flyers reading “Stop the F**s” and featuring an image of a child crouching between two rainbow belts insinuating abuse appeared across the suburbs of Sydney.

Another flyer, found in Brisbane, juxtaposed an image of a straight couple with a baby alongside a photo of a gay couple with a young child. “A vote for gay marriage is a vote for child abuse,” the Brisbane flyer read.

In 2023, Brisbane’s LGBTQ+ Wynnum Fringe festival was targeted with fake flyers insinuating that children would be abused at its Pride event.

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