Shocking stories of extreme “reparative” therapy committed on LGBTQ youth have been on a decline in recent years thanks to shifting public opinion and new laws. But a new book from an ex-Mormon detailing her experience as a teen is a sobering reminder of the unresolved trauma still out there.
When Alex Cooper, now 21, told her Mormon parents she was gay at 15 years old, their initial reaction was to kick her out. That would be tragic enough as it is had they not later decided they could “fix” her instead.
Against her will, Alex was taken to the home of fellow Mormons Tiana and Johnny Siale in St. George, Utah, where she was forced into round-the-clock “treatment” for eight months.
That treatment included being forced to face a wall while carrying a backpack filled with heavy stones so she would “feel the burden she was carrying by choosing to be gay,” and being beaten by the Siales.
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“I felt angry, indignant, determined to find a way out,” Cooper writes in her new memoir, Saving Alex. “Then the loneliness settled in.”
Related: Mormons Move To Excommunicate High-Profile LGBT Supporter
The Siales told Cooper: “Your family doesn’t want you. God has no place for people like you in His plan.” Sores broke out on her shoulders from carrying the backpack, and her back regularly cramped.
She tried to escape on numerous occasions, and even resorted to attempting suicide. On at least one occasion when she attempted to leave, she was allegedly beaten.
“I came to my feet in front of him,” Cooper writes. “He made a fist and punched me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I doubled over and choked for breath.”
When the Siales finally allowed Alex to attend a local public high school, she discovered the campus Gay-Straight Alliance and was put in touch with Paul Burke, an attorney in Salt Lake City.
Burke fought for a year to obtain a court order barring Alex’s parents from forcing her into ex-gay therapy. She became the first openly gay teen to win such a protection in the state of Utah.
Related: Mormon Frontman Of Neon Trees Comes Out
Alex now lives as an out lesbian in Portland, OR, and is choosing to process her experience by sharing her story rather than prosecuting the Siales.
“As long as I was sitting in a courtroom looking at them I couldn’t move on with my life, and that’s what I needed to do,” Cooper said in an interview with Publishers Weekly.
She added that she doesn’t blame her parents, who she feels were only trying to do what was best with the misinformation they had.
While the Mormon church no longer advocates so-called reparative therapy, they still teach that gay sex is deeply sinful.
In November of last year, the church outlined a new policy that declares same-sex couples apostates, and bans their children from being baptized.
Only four states — California, New Jersey, Oregon and Illinois — plus Washington, D.C., ban ex-gay therapy on minors.
h/t: NCRM
Grant Mealey
Nice very enlightened ð??¢
Bill Mountrey
Mormons = failures. Like Mitt and “reparative” therapy.
Major D. Easthagen III
Sounds like “Christian Love” in the USA
JamJewel
They are so ridiculous, those Moroons! On the one hand they want to excommunicate you if you are gay yet on the other, actually put same sex attracted [SSI] married people into long-term on-going group therapy where they get to meet & greet, have sex, repent, and repeat. It’s just crazy!
Jay DAmico
and then he was cured….lol
Laurence James
She’s a better person than I am. If they had done those things to me it wouldn’t have ended well for them.
Marty Courtney
What Mormons will not tell the outside world is that they believe they are the only true Christian church. The others are apostates. How do I know this? I was an Elder in the Church until I chose to leave it. And I am gay. The Church is the definition of a cult in that they believe they are the only ones with the truth. This surprises me not at all.
Mack
Sue them for infliction of pain and suffering. I would also name my parents as well.
Jeffery M. Cook
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153941664782789&id=759557788&set=a.10150102100247789.283573.759557788&source=57&ref=m_notif¬if_t=feed_comment_reply
Tony Gagliardi
Mormons are fucked up!!!
Billy Budd
Religion is the root of all evil.
Kevin J Desmond
That church in my opinion is a fucken cult, magic underwear and going to the plane Klabob, oh and lets not for that all black people were made by the devil. I have some friends who were raised Mormon and they all said the same thing .. that church and it’s people are fucken freaks.
Typhon
@Marty Courtney: Dear Marty, The mormon church is hardly the only organisation/cult to make the claim to possess the truth absolutely… the fact so many different people of faith have reached radically different, mutually exclusive conclusions about the nature of the divine indicates ‘faith’ (or revelation) does not work as a mechanism of determining truth. To think otherwise is to indulge inn the montrous arrogance that ones feelings are the arbitor of reality.
DCguy
” is choosing to process her experience by sharing her story rather than prosecuting the Siales.
“As long as I was sitting in a courtroom looking at them I couldn’t move on with my life, and that’s what I needed to do,” Cooper said in an interview with Publishers Weekly.
She added that she doesn’t blame her parents, who she feels were only trying to do what was best with the misinformation they had.”
So in other words, she is still so tied to the belief of not rocking the boat that she will show everybody out there that there is no punishment for assault, imprisonment, abuse, and torture because as a gay person there will be no repercussions.
Those people should be in jail, and no, her parents weren’t doing the best they could, they turned on their child, are bad people and deserve all the grief that the courts can heap on them.
Hussain-TheCanadian
So she can’t sue them or get some sort of compensation from them? Or maybe force the Mormon Church to stop?
Hussain-TheCanadian
@Hussain-TheCanadian: I can’t believe something like this is legal in the US.
Melissa McCullough
If I was the judge I would sentence the parents to the same course for straightening them out as parents
Benet Leigh
Alex is much more forgiving than I would be. Why hasn’t anyone been arrested for kidnapping and torture?
Tony Chaplinski
what needs more “reparative” [sic] work are the churches themselves
Victor Barry
His magic underwear did not protect him?
April Boucher
Now that’s the Good Christian way. Christians are the biggest hypocrites. ð??¡.
Justin Weeks
Just another cult for you! that’s what most religion is
Douglas Schlitz
The Mormon church has proven itself to be an evil religious cult !
David Scrivens
Latter Days ring a bell
Antony Nguyen
His captures should be jailed like warren jeffs is
Charles Phillip Chezick
And that’s not a crime?
Elon L Bugyi
S T O P I T.
Mark Graves
WTF!?
SFHandyman
Why weren’t the torturers prosecuted for child abuse? The parents should be charged with neglect also.
The Mormon Church is a cult started by a con-man. All religions are BS, but the LDS Church is young enough we have full documentation of its founding by a con-man.
Read the CES Letter. The church is nuts. It would be almost funny if it wasn’t still capturing new recruits and they weren’t still teaching it to children.
I’ve also been listening to Named Mormonism Podcast. It is truly bizarre. (The guy making it is a young 20 something ex-mormon. A couple of times in early episodes he uses Anit-Gay slurs. He was raised very sheltered and just didn’t realize he was being hurtful. After he was clued in, he apologized and hasn’t said anything derogatory about gays since. Mormon leaders do not get any leeway though.)
Ron King
Those “religious”hate groups gain pleasure inflicting pain on others,what gives them the right
SenorDevon
@DCGuy I can’t speak for her, but I can speak of my experiences post Trauma and it seems, she is just trying to get over this part of her life and put it past her. It’s not her job to go after these awful Pastors.
Linda Jamieson
Really !!!!!
Stuart Senften
Awful Mormon Cult!! Tax The Mormon Cult!!!
Martin Talbot
File a criminal complaint !
GayEGO
Why not ask the Mormon Church about “The Fall of ’55” when 9 out of 10 gays arrested were Mormons.
Stached1
If she knew they would react that why, why did she even ever come out to them? Normally I don’t advocate people staying closeted but in this case I do.
youarekiddingme
@Stached1: Yes, let’s blame the 15 year old girl who decided to be honest with herself and her parents instead of living a lie. That’s what we should do. We should encourage our children to be good liars! Yea, I agree with you completely!
Come on now. Do you think, for one moment, that she thought that her parents would have her shipped off to be tortured? She knew the religion condemned homosexuality, but so what. I was catholic. My religion condemned homosexuality. My parents didn’t do such a thing..in fact quite the opposite (yes I know I’m fortunate). A 15 year old kid (bursting at the seams to be truthful), is hoping that his/her parents will put aside any b.s. Beliefs and love and support their child (as a normal parent would). Is that too much to ask? I say no. Let’s stop blaming/shaming the victim shall we?