Secretive, ‘devastating’ conversion therapy is hard to tackle, says Montreal man who survived it, but new bill will help
CTV
A Montreal man who went through so-called “conversion therapy”—and says he’s lucky to be alive after it—celebrated Canada’s new ban on the practice Wednesday, saying he expects it to reach even into the secretive corners of the country where this still happens.
“If just one or two pastors… are prosecuted for that,” said Jonathan Di Carlo, it will have “a chilling effect.”
And if the law had been on the books when he was younger, he added, it would have given him some outside perspective before starting meeting with his church pastor to purge what he was told was the “demon possession” inside of him—being gay.
“I think that if I would have seen messaging about this, and if it would’ve been illegal when I was a kid, I probably would have at least had a bit more pause in allowing him to teach me all of these things,” said Di Carlo, now 33.
Conversion therapy is often seen as a burden imposed by victim’s families, but Di Carlo described a more furtive, and isolating, process.
