INQUIRY EUROPE 1
It is a practice that is used to go under media radars. Little known, almost unthinkable in a country where marriage between people of the same sex is allowed, conversion therapies to "cure" of homosexuality exist in France. While two MEPs, including Laurence VanCeunebrock-Mialon (LREM), want to ban them, Europe 1 has investigated these practices proposed by some religions.
To fully understand what these "therapies" are, our reporter met Kayle, a young man whose mother forced him to undergo these practices for five years. "The day that marked me the most was the one where there was a 'Latin' pastor, I step into the church and immediately he shouts in his microphone that I have the demon of homosexuality in He told me to go ahead in front of everyone, undress, put me naked, pour salt on my body, and pray, "says the young man at the microphone of Europe 1." It lasted a good five minutes I was like that, naked, in front of everyone.
If the pastor has since left France, and can not be found, his replacement ensures that she does not do this kind of thing, but when the question is about colleagues, she does not want to answer. A omerta present in all religions that makes it difficult to quantify the phenomenon. But the Refuge Association, which deals with the victims of these therapies, ensures receiving two to three calls related to these practices every month.
Electroshock to "convert" young homosexuals
If they are called therapies, at no time is medicine evoked during these practices: everything is insidious. We are talking about a "seminar", we slip the name of an imam, a pastor, or even a psychiatrist that would be good to meet. And that's exactly what MP Laurence VanCeunebrock-Mialon is denouncing. "There is a private clinic in the south of France in which one or two psychiatrists continue to practice seismotherapy, electroshock, on young homosexuals," she says at the microphone of Europe 1.
"It seems completely crazy that in our time we still practice this kind of things.Transverse therapies are not addressed in the Penal Code, and it is therefore necessary to remedy," says the MP. Because registering these therapies would facilitate the filing of complaints that are now very rare. A step forward that also expects the Miviludes, the interministerial mission of fight against sectarian excesses, which launches a call for testimony to finally put an end to these medieval practices.