When Sarah, a 17 year old in Texas, decided to take her girlfriend to the prom, her parents forced her into an “East Texas Christian boarding facility for troubled teens” from which she has repeatedly attempted to escape.
Sarah was being held incommunicado and must stay for a year (presumably until she attains her majority).
Her extended family started a Gofundme campaign to raise the money to fight Sarah’s parents in court and get her sprung from her “conversion therapy.”
As of this writing, there’s $67,000+ in the fund, and the organizers are saying that Sarah has been released, though they “don’t yet know what this means for the legal case.”
Meet my cousin Sarah. At 17, her future looks bright. She is in the top 10% of her class, runs cross-country and belongs to the National Honor Society and the debate team. She is also gay. Like any high school kids in a relationship, Sarah and her girlfriend wanted to go to prom together. But when they did that, Sarah’s parents, who believe that homosexuality is a sin and abnormal, sent Sarah away against her will to an East Texas Christian boarding facility for troubled teens to “pray away the gay.”
Not only does this type of “therapy” not work, mental health professionals from organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have found it to be psychologically damaging, especially for minors. And Sarah has been told that she must stay in this facility for a whole year. So instead of being surrounded by friends and extended family who love and support Sarah for who she is, she’ll be isolated in a place where the fact that she is gay is treated as a sin and an illness. Instead of preparing for college and competing in the state debate tournament, she’ll be doing forced labor every day and enduring Bible-based “therapy” for her “disease.”
She is not allowed phone calls or email or any form of computer communication. She is also not allowed visitors and cannot leave the property. She is completely cut off from the outside world. She tried to run away, but was caught by the staff and returned to the facility.
Texas Family Raises $40,000 to Free 17-Year-Old Girl From a Gay Conversion Therapy Camp [Anna Merlan]
(via Skepchick)