Lesbian woman details abuse she endured as part of a Morman's "conversion therapy" program
Alex Cooper is finally lifting this weight off her shoulders.
In a new book, Cooper, 21, details the events that unfolded after she came out to her parents as a lesbian at 15 years old. Saving Alex recounts her eight months in conversion therapy, a suicide attempt and the cruel things the Mormon leadership of the therapy told her.
Her most visceral memory, she writes, is of having to stand against a wall with a backpack full of rocks.
"I did not know how many hours I had been standing there, quietly trying to manage the pain by shifting my weight from foot to foot," the books reads, according to Salt Lake City television station KUTV.
According to Cooper, the conversion therapy leaders told her that her family didn't want her and that "God had no place for people like her" in his plan. Cooper endured other physical abuse, like direct punches to the gut, as well," she wrote.
Cooper was raised in Southern California as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose members are known as Mormons. The Mormon-led conversion program in Utah, led by a husband and wife duo, according to Cooper, repeatedly told teenage Cooper that she was there because she was gay and that they would change her sexuality.
https://www.yahoo.com/style/teen-forced-wear-backpack-full-155600640.html
There are few people in the world that scare me more than religious nuts like that.