Kejn Pieri
BBC World Service
Around the world, 64 countries still criminalize same-sex sexual relations, with penalties ranging from prison to death, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
And yet, in past centuries, punishments were often even more brutal.
One remarkable case from the 18th century tells the story of a Dutchman who was cast away on a desert island – a story almost forgotten in history, until two historians put it together again.
Three hundred years ago, Lendert Hasenbosch recorded these words after being marooned on Ascension Island, a remote volcanic outcrop in the Atlantic, about 1.540 kilometers from the African coast and 2.300 kilometers from South America:
"Saturday, May 5, 1725. By order of the commander and captain of the Dutch fleet, I, Lendert Hasenbosch, have been left on the shore of this deserted island to my great misfortune."
As he wrote his first diary entry, Hasenbosch began the final chapter of his life, a story that would remain hidden for centuries before being rediscovered.
Just a few years earlier, Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," inspired by a real-life story, had captured the imagination of readers.
But Hasenbosch's fate was unique.
As Elvin Hoffman explains, Hasenbosch did not end up on Ascension Island by accident; he was deliberately left there, condemned as a "sodomite" – a criminal term of the time for same-sex sexual acts.
Sailor cast away on an island
Hasenbosch's story first surfaced in January 1726, when a group of British sailors landed on Ascension Island and came across a makeshift tent.
They found a diary in it, but not its author.
The diary was returned to England, where it was translated and published in several sensational editions, including "Punished Sodomy".
Although these publications preserved fragments of Hasenbosch's suffering, they erased his name and turned him into a nameless figure of reference in the public imagination.
Lendert Hasenbosch was born around 1695 in The Hague, the only son of Johannes Hasenbosch and Maria van Bergenda.
After his mother's death, his father moved the family to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), while the teenage Lendert remained to live in the Netherlands.
At the age of 18, he joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC), where he started as a sailor and rose to the position of a trusted accountant.
The VOC, often called the world's first multinational company, engaged in widespread trade throughout Asia, but its workers faced brutal working conditions.
For almost a decade, Hasenbosch served at VOC stations in Batavia and Cochin (now Kochi, India).
Then, in October 1724, for unknown reasons, he sailed for Holland, embarking on a journey home that would never end.
Turtle meat, blood and urine
At one point during the journey, Hasenbosch was accused of sodomy – then considered one of the gravest sins.
The VOC usually punished such accusations with execution, but in this case the verdict was banishment to an island.
On May 1725, XNUMX, Hasenbosch was left alone on Ascension Island with only a tent, a Bible, some seeds, and an unfilled water bottle.
For the first month, he searched the barren island for drinking water and prayed for salvation.
His loneliness soon became unbearable.
He tried to tame a bird to keep him company, but it died.
He planted onions, peas, and edible seeds, but nothing bore fruit.
In June, Hasenbosch began to hallucinate, obsessed with guilt and visions.
One ghost, he wrote, was "a man I once knew" who "stayed with me for quite a while."
It remains unclear whether these were his actual words or later embellishments added by British editors eager for drama.
When the island's only natural water source, known as Dampiers Drip, dried up, Hasenbosch became increasingly weak.
Unable to catch the goats and with the rats ravaging his modest crops, he resorted to desperate measures:
"August 22nd: I caught a large turtle and drank almost a quarter gallon of its blood... I drank my own urine."
In October, barely keeping himself alive, he survived on turtle meat, blood, and urine.
His last diary entry, dated October 14, 1725, was terse and eerie:
"I lived as before."
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Discovering history
Hasenbosch's story remained half-remembered for more than two centuries.
British editions of "Sodomy Punished" (1726) or "Authentic Relation" (1728) preserved parts of his suffering, but stripped him of his identity.
In the 1990s, Dutch historian Michiel Kulbergen came across a rare English booklet, "Authentic Relationship," in the Amsterdam Maritime Museum.
She told the story of a real-life Dutch Robinson Crusoe who was marooned on a desert island for the crime of sodomy.
Intrigued, he began digging through the VOC archives and discovered Hasenbosch's name there.
A chilling note in the VOC's payroll records confirmed his fate: "On the seventeenth of April 1725, on the Prattenburg, he was sentenced to be cast ashore, having committed a sin, on Ascension Island or elsewhere, with the confiscation of his unpaid wages."
Kulbergen published his findings in 2002, in the book "The Dutch Robinson Crusoe", but tragically died of cancer shortly before the book was published.
Three years later, historian and writer Alex Ritzema came across Kulbergen's work in a library in Deventer.
A lifelong collector of island histories, Ritzema was fascinated and in 2011 published "A Dutch Exile on Ascension Island," bringing Hasenbosch's long-buried story to readers in English.
He dedicated the book to "two Dutchmen who died too soon, Lendert and Michiel."
Alex Ritzema also tragically passed away from cancer in 2022.
Today, Hasenbosch, Kulbergen and Ritzema are linked through the centuries – three Dutchmen whose lives have become intertwined in an attempt to ensure that Lendert's story is not lost to history.
'We are no longer invisible'
The suffering of Lendert Hasenbosch may seem distant, but the forces behind his persecution remain well known.
Historian Elvin Hoffmann explains that in 18th-century Holland, sodomy was often ignored or silently tolerated until a "crisis of masculinity" experienced after military defeats triggered a wave of brutal persecution.
Sodomites became scapegoats for the social crisis.
"In 18th-century Holland, the decline was already being felt... and the solution was to severely punish sodomites," says Hoffman.
"This is something we need to pay attention to today – in times of crisis, there is a risk that we will try to restore masculinity by punishing queer people more severely."
Only five years after Hasenbosch's death, on Sodomy trials in Utrecht, up to 300 people were prosecuted; many were publicly executed, with sentences ranging from burning at the stake to strangulation, until the law was finally repealed in 1803.
Today, echoes of that sacrifice are visible in the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in countries such as Russia, Uganda and Poland, often presented as protecting "traditional values".
In the United States, after his re-election, President Donald Trump signed executive orders that critics say roll back the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
The two orders he withdrew were a directive aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
Trump also signed an order recognizing only two genders – male and female – and said they cannot be changed.
Such laws have long contributed to erasing LGBTQ+ people from history, turning their lives into cautionary tales, says Julia Erth, executive director of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
But she adds: "We have always been there... The pressure to exclude LGBT people from 'decent' society may be as alive as ever, but at least we are no longer invisible."
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