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Virginia conversion therapy group hit with consumer fraud complaint
Three LGBT advocacy groups recently filed a federal fraud complaint targeting People Can Change, a Virginia-based organization that claims it can help individuals overcome “unwanted same-sex attraction.”
Southern Poverty Law Center, The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Human Rights Campaign filed the 39-page report with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against the Ruckersville-based gay conversion group citing their practices as “deceptive, unfair and fraudulent.”
People Can Change offers services such as the “Journey Into Manhood” weekend experience which is done in England, Israel and across the U.S, along with other “experimental healing weekends” meant to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The report filed by the three LGBT advocacy groups claims People Can Change violates Section 5 of the FTC Act by claiming they can change a person’s sexual orientation.
The complaint asks the Federal Trade Commission to ”take enforcement action to stop PCC’s deceptive advertising, marketing, and other business practices in all forms, including through its website, brochures, videos, social media, emails, or other advertisements or promotional materials.”
Mathew Shurka, an ambassador for Born Perfect, a campaign from the National Center for Lesbian Rights to end conversion therapy , was in conversion therapy for five years and was treated by People Can Change in 2008, at the age of 20.
“People Can Change do these weekend camps, I attended one of their programs… they rent a sleepaway camp site and they have men come together “to heal” their homosexuality,” he said.
He attended one of their camps in Charlottesville and was specifically treated by People Can Change’s Executive Director Rick Wyler.
“{During} the weekend they use this fairy tale narrative, they use the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk, ” he said.
As the story goes, Jack takes his family’s cow to market in exchange for money, but instead returns with magic beans. Furious, his mother throws out the beans and sends Jack to bed.
“The seeds (beans) are supposed to represent his testicles which is a representation of his masculinity,” he said. “The whole journey of the weekend is to go fight back for your masculinity and you go through all these exercises that they believe will help you get rid of all of the past trauma in your life that created your homosexuality.”
Shurka said People Can Change believes that being homosexual stemmed from some sort of childhood trauma.
“They even reward you at the end, during the weekend they give you a necklace, it looks like an Indian necklace with a sac of seeds in it,” he said.
Stinque has an eye-opening story of a writer they sent undercover to a People Can Change weekend camp.
Shurka is in full support of the complaint and hope the FTC chooses to accept it and pursue an investigation.
“{There’s}he potential that the FTC will rule conversion therapy as fraud which will then make conversion therapy illegal for the entire United States for all ages and by anyone conducting it,” he said. “It could be a psychotherapist a rabbi, a priest, a life coach anyone who is wiling to take money in exchange of something called conversion therapy with the promise of claiming it could make someone heterosexual.”
Shurka said many are confident this complaint could lead to a federal investigation based on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent executive action to ban private and public health care insurers from covering conversion therapy. Shurka also mentioned the recent ruling from a New Jersey judge that claims of gay conversion therapy that describe homosexuality as a curable mental disorder are fraud.
California, Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon, as well as the District of Columbia, have all banned the practice using the legislative process.
“They have a lot of support leading up to this,” he said. “it would be a really great milestone.” he said. “The victims of it and the people that are claiming to be conversion therapists, they need a lot of healing.”
Other organizations, such as Christian litigation group, Liberty Counsel, are not so happy about this complaint.
Liberty Counsel has posted this Letter of Opposition to “Change Therapy” on its website, asking for signatures to urge the FTC not to take on the request made by the LGBT groups.
“This request is an outrageous overreach of a government agency’s power and a clear violation of individual rights,” the letter states. “The allegations made in the letter are one-sided and skewed toward the pro-homosexual viewpoint.”many young people and their
Liberty Counsel’s letter also says the lives of many young people and their families will be “destroyed under this potential ban.”
In an email, Liberty Counsel had this to say about the complaint and their letter:
“Homosexual activists want us to believe that conversion away from their lifestyle is not possible – and therefore, “Change Therapy” should be banned in the United States. This assertion is pure deception at its core and a stealth tool of recruitment for their movement. The minors we represent in our litigation efforts have not and do not want to act on same-sex attractions, nor do they want to engage in such behavior. They are greatly benefiting from counseling. That is a fact that pro-homosexual lawmakers want to shield from the American public.”
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