Of course the charges weren't substantiated - the army didn't court-martial the dead.

The cultural background seems to have been that Sinhalese Buddhists were totally indifferent to pederasty, as they still were around 1970 when Arthur C. Clarke moved to Ceylon - both of them knew an opportunity when they saw one. Unfortunately for Macdonald, that didn't apply to Catholics of Portuguese colonial descent, like the merchant da Silva whose sons Macdonald was messing about with. Da Silva went ballistic and took it to the Army top brass. Whatever the anti-Scottish biases involved, the army does deserve some credit for taking a complaint by a non-white colonial subject seriously.