OUR LATEST ISSUE
Gay News: A psychotherapist who tried to convert a gay man into becoming straight may be struck off
BACP: Mrs Pilkington had "agenda"
Conversion therapist faces sack
17 January 2011
Laura Pilkington, 60, offered to “cure” a patient of his homosexuality and told him that she viewed homosexuality as a mental illness and an addiction as well as an antireligious phenomenon.
However, her “patient” was, in fact, award-winning gay journalist Patrick Strudwick who secretly recorded their conversations, before reporting Mrs Pilkington to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
Mrs Pilkington, who is a devout Christian, believes that all men are born heterosexual, but that some then choose to become gay.
She claims that her conversion therapy programme, Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE), can restore men to their heterosexuality.
Her own son is gay, but Mrs Pilkington insists that he “is heterosexual. He just has a homosexual problem...
“We say everybody is heterosexual nut some people have a homosexual problem,” she said. “Nobody is born gay. It is environmental; it is in the upbringing.”
In a disciplinary letter it sent to Mrs Pilkington, the BACP accused her of “praying to God to heal [Strudwick] of his homosexuality” and of having an “agenda that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people can change”.
Mrs Pilkington’s defence is being funded by the Christian Legal Centre, who maintain that she was the victim of entrapment and that “therapy should remain freely available for those who wish to change their homosexual behaviour.”
Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Christian Legal Centre said: “It is shocking that Lesley was targeted, lied to and misrepresented by this homosexual activist and even worse that her professional body consider her actions worthy of investigation.”
Last year the Royal College of Psychiatrists issued a statement condemning conversion therapies and stating that there is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.
It added, “So-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish.”
