Authorities covering up gay man's disappearance, says mother

by Nick Langewis




Austrian police are sweeping the disappearance of a gay American under the rug, charges the man's mother.

Aeryn Gilleran, a 34-year-old United Nations employee from upstate New York working in Vienna, has not been seen or heard from since October 29, 2007. His mother, Kathy, has reached out to media outlets and PFLAG to tell of meeting "constant stonewalling, rudeness and even outright lies," as she told the Cortland Standard. One investigator told her during her six-week visit to Vienna that since Aeryn was a gay man, he was emotionally unstable and probably committed suicide.

Conficting accounts between police and civilians have Aeryn visiting a sauna the night of October 29, a fight possibly breaking out with a group of tourists. A scream may have been heard around the time he last spoke to a classmate on the phone. Patrons at the sauna recognized him by the picture Kathy showed them but could not offer further help, and a bouncer said that someone had been sent to the hospital that night after the fight, which may or may not have happened, and Aeryn possibly fled wearing nothing but a towel. Many of Aeryn's belongings, including his passport and credit cards, were found at the sauna.

A "bald-headed man" had possibly been sighted floating in the Danube River by a fisherman, but Gilleran said the story changed frequently, from someone hearing a splash to "maybe someone heard a scream around that time, but maybe not."

Aeryn had been harassed by the police in the past, Kathy said, suspecting that the jump into the Danube never happened, and that something happened at the sauna that was covered up by the tourists or the police. A letter dated December 10 said Aeryn's disappearance was "under investigation," but nothing has been heard since. The State Department's hands are tied, as it is unable to force another government to investigate further.

Kathy Gilleran told WTVH that she could relate to the mother of Natalee Holloway, the young woman who made headlines after going missing in Aruba in 2005.

"I sat here as a voyeur," she said, "for...over a year and a half watching it nightly, thinking to myself...'thank God that's not me'...and all of a sudden, it's like I'm [Beth Holloway], except I don't have the blond-haired, blue-eyed cheerleader. I've got the 34-year-old gay man that people are not going to feel that same compassion for."

The accompanying video report appears courtesy of WTVH-TV, as broadcast on August 1, 2008:

http://pageoneq.com/news/2008/gilleran081408.html

Thursday September 11, 2008

Returning to Austria in search of her son



Kathy Gilleran doesn't give up easily.


The Cortland, NY mother (pictured), who we originally reported on in August, still hasn't learned many details about her son Aeryn's disappearance in Austria . . . . still hasn't received much help from officials in Vienna . . . and is still being told by U.S. and U.N. officials that their hands are tied when it comes to pressuring the Austrian government to take any action. But she is still searching for answers, and is about to return to the last place her son was seen, to make an anniversary that is still fresh in her heart.


Kathy is planning a trip back to Vienna, to mark the 1-year anniversary of Aeryn's disappearance, and step up her efforts to find out the truth about what happened.


"I have to be there on the 29th of October," she recently told PFLAG. "My friends are afraid for me to go, but I know that I have to be there."


Following our original report about Aeryn's disappearance, and Kathy's quest to find out what happened that night in Vienna, the press has taken up the story and Kathy has spoken out, hoping to find someone who knows something. Last weekend, she spoke with PFLAG's Ithaca chapter, and just before that, her hometown paper, the Ithaca Journal, threw in its support for her efforts, writing in an editorial that, "Public pressure, especially when applied to politicians in cases like this, serves many a purpose, including keeping the spotlight on Aeryn Gilleran's disappearance when age will continue to make the case get colder and colder."


"I have one last shot," Kathy told the paper. "Unless I can get people interested in this, people seeing that this is wrong, people knowing that the U.S. government at least says it's helpless if you're an American citizen and you go missing overseas, at least in Austria.”


Now, she has started her plans to make the trek back to Vienna, and press again for answers.


"I am trying to make plans to go . . . for a week," she told PFLAG. "I am hoping that airfares go down by then."

http://pflagblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/returning-to-austria-in-search-of-her.html

One year later a mother returns to Vienna

Thursday, October 16, 2008

In the months since we first reported on Kathy Gilleran's search for her son, Aeryn, PFLAGers have asked us to keep you updated on the story . . . and there has been an outpouring of support, from Kathy's hometown PFLAG chapter to New York Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell, for Kathy and her family. We've stayed in constant contact with her, and this morning the Ithaca Times became the latest press outlet to report on Aeryn's disappearance.



In just a few weeks, Kathy will return to Vienna on the one-year anniversary of the last time Aeryn was heard from. And because, in part, of the media attention that PFLAG has brought to the case, Austrian officials have agreed to meet with her, and the consulate in Vienna has stepped up, reached out to Kathy and finally showed some interest in helping to solve this case.


"That Aeryn was gay is something Gilleran thinks played a role in the way police handled the case," the Times reports. "He'd had a run-in with police in 2003 when he was taken into custody over a subway ticket miscommunication, and filed a complaint with Amnesty International regarding his treatment by officers. According to an Associated Press report, the deposition Aeryn filed regarding the incident stated comments were made about his being gay."


"Gilleran has had contact with several international agencies for the protection of gays and lesbians, and one told her Vienna 'was receptive of homosexuals, and didn't see any wrongdoing by police in cases involving gay people. They felt gay people would not be afraid to talk to police,'" the paper recounts.


"But, two weeks prior to Aeryn's disappearance, the Vienna police felt the need to start a gay and lesbian task force to protect gay and lesbian officers," she said. "If nothing was wrong, why would there be a need to protect them?"


And now, Kathy is preparing to visit the site of Aeryn's disappearance and continue her quest for answers.


"Gilleran is headed back to Vienna in the coming weeks - leaving Oct. 26 and returning Nov. 2 - to mark the one-year anniversary of her son's disappearance," the Times notes. "She's going by herself because she's afraid of how she might handle herself if friends -who've offered to go with her - try to comfort her."


"Because I have to, because my son is there somewhere, because I have to be there," Gilleran said tearfully when asked why she was going back. "I want to make sure they know I'm not going away. Somehow they made my son disappear. I'm not going away quietly."


And as long as Kathy continues her search, PFLAG will continue to stand, and fight, alongside her, too.


http://pflagblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-year-later-mother-returns-to-vienna.html


To read the complete Ithaca Times report, click here:

http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=16&SubSectionID=83&ArticleID=409&TM=68796.34

Quest for an Inquest as a Mother Searches for her Son Abroad

Monday, November 10, 2008



Whenever an American is missing abroad, the news cycle can sometimes seem overwhelming. The most notable case, of course, is that of Natalee Holloway, a young American woman who went missing in Aruba, and the search for whom saturated the U.S. and international media for months on end. From profiles of every possible suspect to interviews with Holloway's parents, the coverage of her case was virtually non-stop . . . and, from at least one perspective, rightfully so.


Media coverage can reach millions of people at one time, and potentially move those with information about the missing person to come forward. Answers that investigators cannot find are often unearthed by savvy reporters working to uncover the truth. The media, in many ways, can play as pivotal a role in a missing person search as the police and other investigators themselves.

The case of Aeryn Gilleran, however, has been largely different. Aeryn, a gay man who was living abroad in Vienna while working for the United Nations International Development Organization (UNIDO), disappeared just over a year ago, and his case remains unsolved. And while media outlets have started to slowly pick up on the story, following our original report on his disappearance, there has been no Dateline NBC, 20/20 or even CNN Investigates report on his mysterious disappearance.

That, however, is not stopping his mother, Kathy Gilleran (pictured), from undertaking her own one-woman search for her son.

Last week, Kathy flew to Vienna, on the one-year anniversary of Aeryn's disappearance, determined to push forward in her search for answers. She took the flight alone, even though many of her friends advised otherwise, and she criss-crossed the city, holding a vigil for her son and meeting with investigators assigned to the case and members of the Austrian parliament. A gaggle of cameras didn't go with her, but the memory of her son, and the perseverance that only a mother can muster, certainly did.

During her time in Vienna, Kathy called out the cops for their mangled investigation and caught the attention of at least one lawmaker who, at least, seems determined to rise to the occasion and help an American mother find her missing son.

On Friday, I spent an hour on the phone with Kathy Gilleran, who returned from her trip abroad with a palpable sense of hope and an unflappable insistence that she will soldier on until she knows what happened to her gay son.

http://pflagblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/quest-for-inquest-as-mother-searches.html