A lesbian Mormon teenager was compelled to carry a backpack full of stones for as long as 18 hours each day as part of religious order’s attempt to make her straight. Alex Cooper, 21, recounts in her book, Saving Alex, when she came out to her parents in 2009, she was kicked out of home at the young age of 15 before being taken to a fellow Mormon’s home to be “fixed”.
According to her book, Cooper was subjected to eight months of captivity and torture at the Mormon couple’s home in St. George, Utah, where Johnny and Tiana Siale, who had no formal training in counseling, attempted to make her heterosexual. They would apparently force Cooper to stand against a wall, wearing a backpack full of stones, to make her feel the burden that she was carrying by choosing to be homosexual.
“I felt angry, indignant, determined to find a way out,” Cooper writes. “Then the loneliness settled in.”
The Siales told Cooper that her family did not want her, as God had no place for people like her in his plans. Over time, the young teenager developed sores on her shoulders and cramps in her back, before attempting suicide and repeatedly trying to escape but being beaten ruthlessly instead upon getting caught each time.
“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.”
Cooper alleges in her book that every visitor to the Siales’ home knew about the abuse that was being inflicted upon her but chose to nothing about it. Finally, when the Siales permitted Cooper to attend a local high school, she found support in the Gay-Straight Alliance, which introduced her to an attorney, Paul Burke, in Salt Lake City. Burke reportedly fought for an entire year to obtain a court order, forbidding her parents from subjecting her to any more reparative therapy. Cooper thus became the first openly lesbian teenager to win such constitutional protections in the state.
Cooper now resides as a lesbian in Portland, Oregon and is no longer a practicing Mormon. She eventually chose not to prosecute her parents or 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 of the Siales in an interview.
She also managed to forgive and reconcile with her parents, saying that they were only doing what they felt was correct according to the tenets of Mormonism.
“I think that's what a lot of parents are under the impression of, that they're doing the best thing for their child,” Cooper said. “I don't blame my parents. … I am able to share my life with them, and it's awesome.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is known for having carried out vomit and shock aversion therapy on homosexual students of Brigham Young University at a certain point in time but it no longer promotes this kind of reparative therapy. However, the religious order still propagates that gay sex is sinful and as recently as in November 2015, it unveiled a policy declaring homosexual couples apostates and prohibiting their children from being baptized at the church.
Responding to Saving Alex, the Mormon Church issued a statement, denouncing any therapy that subjects individuals to abusive practices.
“We hope those who experience the complex realities of same-sex attraction find compassion and understanding from family members, professional counselors and church members,” said LDS spokesperson Eric Hawkins.
Photo Credits: Reader's Digest
