Patrick Strudwick, the gay muckraking British journalist who posed as a man in need of conversion therapy, might claim a new victim: Psychologist Lesley Pilkington, who’s practiced for 20 years and claims she treated about 10 patients for their homosexuality, will learn this week whether the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy will revoke her credentials. Writing in The Independent, Strudwick exposed a cadre of quack therapists doing more harm than good; the list of names includes Dr. Paul Miller, the psychiatrist who advised disgraced anti-gay former Irish lawmaker Iris Robinson. But for now it’s Pilkington who faces rebuke.
The shrink, who uses a program called Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, claims Strudwick engaged in entrapment. Which is silly, because only government officials can engage in “entrapment.” That, and it doesn’t change the fact that Pilkington led Strudwick down the same ex-gay therapy route she would have with an actual patient seeking to go straight. Sify.com relays:
On the tape, Strudwick asks Pilkington if she views homosexuality as ‘a mental illness, an addiction or an antireligious phenomenon’. She replies: ‘It is all of that.’ ‘Entering into therapy with somebody who thinks I am sick… is the singularly most chilling experience of my life,’ Strudwick told The Sunday Telegraph.
Strudwick approached Pilkington at a largely Christian conference — run by the US organisation The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality — where he said he was unhappy with his homosexual lifestyle and that he ‘wanted to leave it’. He then requested ‘treatment for his same-sex attraction’. In May 2009, Strudwick attended a therapy session at Pilkington’s private practice, based at her home in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, and recorded the session on a tape machine strapped to his stomach.
In the disciplinary letter sent to Pilkington, she is accused by BACP of ‘praying to God to heal him (Strudwick) of his homosexuality’. She is also accused of having an ‘agenda that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people can change and that you allegedly attempted to inflict these views on him’.
Pilkington told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘He told me he was looking for a treatment for being gay. He said he was depressed and unhappy and would I give him some therapy. I told him I only work using a Christian biblical framework and he said that was exactly what he wanted.’ The therapist added: ‘We don’t use the word ‘cure’ because it makes it (homosexuality) sound like a disease. We are helping people move out of that lifestyle because they are depressed and unhappy. We say everybody is heterosexual but some people have a homosexual problem. Nobody is born gay. It is environmental; it is in the upbringing.’
The kicker? Pilkington says she got into the field because her own son, now 29, is gay. Or rather, as she explained last week, he “is heterosexual. He just has a homosexual problem.”
randy
They should all be exposed and expelled. But what is really needed is publicity so that the public knows that this is quackery.
MonereMonae
Good. The more people who have their licenses revoked for conducting such vile, unfair treatments the better. And I agree with Randy: If the general public could see how the wretched procedures affect the people whoa re forced to do them, there could be a more powerful change for the better.
prohomo
@MonereMonae: What vile garbage! Off with their heads!
Ex gay
She should be allowed to offer the services people want.
redball
@Ex gay:
Like American slavery in the 1700s? Logic fail.
We should be careful not to discard ethics in favor of a simplistic supply-and-demand argument.
JM
@redball: Well said. This woman, and people like her, are the disease.
Taylor Siluwé
@JM: Yes, diseased they are, and it’s called fundie religion – and sadly, its wildly contagious.
The only difference between these ex-gay ‘therapists’ and those Westboro inbreds are the wacky signs and brown teeth (although Pilkington isn’t smiling in the pic so I can’t be sure).
All the claims of unhappiness with the “lifestyle”, and having a homosexual “problem” are diversions from the one fact they actually know: It’s against their religious beliefs and thus must be wrong.
Expose them all. It’s past the time the world knew their attempts to subjugate others with their wacky religion puts them in the same crazy realm as suicide bombers who blow themselves up for paradise and tons of young pussy.
Taylor Siluwé
@JM: Yes, diseased they are, and it’s called fundie religion – and sadly, its wildly contagious.
The only difference between these ex-gay ‘therapists’ and those Westboro inbreds are the wacky signs and brown teeth (although Pilkington isn’t smiling in the pic so I can’t be sure).
All the claims of unhappiness with the “lifestyle”, and having a homosexual “problem” are diversions from the one fact they actually know: It’s against their religious beliefs and thus must be wrong.
Expose them all.
It’s past time the world knew their attempts to subjugate others with their wacky religion puts them in the same crazy realm as suicide bombers who blow themselves up for paradise and tons of young p*ssy.
prohomo
@Taylor Siluwé: Amen to that, TAYLOR!!!
Tom
If the lady is on to something and people want to change their lifestyles then more power to them. Why should she lose her job? Nowhere is it written that people are born gay. Noone has ever found a gay gene. As we are young we realize that there is a connection between boys and girls and a purpose that they have together. That reason is to pro-create. There is no purpose for people to be gay. You love a man? So does everyone else. Being a feminine man doesn’t mean you’re gay. Just means you are a feminine man. But as people try to push homosexuality as normal then obviously there’ll be more people claiming it. I pray for each and every gay person as I pray for all people. Repent and God will change your life. Prayers sent.
Codswallop
@Tom: Thank you so much for sharing the wisdom of your ancient book written by people who didn’t know better than to get their drinking water from the same place they took a dump. Once again it has proved to be a source of timeless wisdom in the face of science, education, and experience, all of which say otherwise.
Jeffree
Tom: Best of luck to you in grappling with your own same-sex thoughts. A competent, affirming, Christian counsellor can help you see how misled you’ve been on what the Word says about homosexuality. And help you to lead a happy & faith-filled life!
prohomo
@Tom: Tom: Bullshit.