In Russia, where the entire LGBTQ+ community has been banned as “extremist,” some parents are paying thugs to abduct their queer sons and daughters, forcing them into secure private centers to “cure” them with so-called conversion therapy.
Some of these young people are fleeing the country, looking for safety in the West.
Former residents say conditions behind high concrete walls are like small unregulated prisons, designed for alcoholics, drug addicts, or people whose families see them as problems.
Many were tricked or abducted, then held for months. They recounted being beaten, humiliated or forced to read out confessions that they were destructive and selfish because of their “addiction” to their sexual or gender identity — mimicking rigid programs designed to combat drug and alcohol addiction.
Many of them emerged “somehow mentally broken,” believing there was something wrong with them, said Vladimir Komov, who formerly served as a rights lawyer at a prominent LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group DELO LGBT+, which shut its operations last week due to the ban.
A 2020 report by an independent United Nations expert found that conversion therapy was “deeply harmful … inflicting severe pain and suffering and resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage.” The report called for a global ban.
In time of war, Russia turns up aggression on transgender citizens
In President Vladimir Putin’s move to cement his rule and build a repressive, deeply conservative nation, he has singled out LGBTQ+ people as scapegoats alongside antiwar activists.
But the rhetoric is also part of Putin’s bid to enlist socially conservative nations in Africa and the Middle East to back Russia in its war against Ukraine. At the same, he hopes to divide liberal Western democracies by encouraging antipathy to LGBTQ+ rights.
In a Nov. 30 ruling, Russia’s Supreme Court endorsed a Justice Ministry application to ban the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, following other repressive laws. After the ruling, police raided LGBTQ+ venues in Moscow.
One movie streaming site, apparently fearing prosecution, placed an adults-only rating on “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic,” an animated children’s series, likely because of the pony Rainbow Dash’s rainbow mane and tail — the same colors as a Pride flag.
Before its closure, DELO LGBT+ handled 200 monthly requests for legal help from queer people. Of these requests, 7 percent said their families threatened to put them into treatment centers, tried to do so or had done so in the past, the group said.
“After these laws, the number of people facing threats to be put in such institutions has increased,” Komov said.
Ada Blakewell, a 23-year-old transgender nonbinary person, queer activist and journalist, who uses she and they pronouns, underwent nine months of conversion treatment, from August 2022 until May 2023, in a remote treatment center, Freedom Rehabilitation Center, in the Altai region of Siberia.
Blakewell said she was beaten, thrown into a nearby river as punishment and forced to perform physical exercises repeatedly “until all I could see is white and yet they forced me to do it over and over again.”
Those undergoing the treatment had to swim in the river daily at 8 a.m. before morning prayers, even in winter in subfreezing temperatures. She was given “manly” jobs like chopping wood and helping slaughter chickens, turkeys and pigs “to help myself to become a man.”
In one disturbing incident, she was forced to castrate a pig, after being told that she would see what transgender surgery was like.
“I was given a surgical knife and given instructions how to do it,” she said. “But I couldn’t finish it. I had a severe panic attack and from then on, I was getting more and more suicidal.”
Russia bans international LGBTQ+ movement as ‘extremist’
She was given neuroleptic drugs, designed for people suffering psychiatric illness.
“You could call me a prisoner,” she said.
Alexandra, 28, a Moscow transgender woman whose wealthy parents also rejected her gender identity, was forcibly held in several treatment centers for 21 months.
Alexandra, who agreed to describe her experience on condition that she be identified only by first name, spent 20 months in a center outside Moscow with about 60 other people, mainly drug addicts and alcoholics, which was staffed by former residents, who doled out punishments. They told her being queer was an addiction that would ruin her life.
Alexandra said was so heavily sedated she felt “like a zombie” and was constantly told she was sick. Other residents threatened to kill her. “I felt alone because people around me were from another world,” she said. “People were very distant. I was feeling like I’m canceled. I felt invalid.”
The accounts by Blakewell and by Alexandra could not be independently verified but were consistent with previous accounts in Russian independent media and by international rights groups about conversion therapy centers in Russia.
Blakewell said she had been tricked into going to the center by her mother, a business executive, who asked her to support her during heart surgery in a rural area of the Altai region. Her mother got out of the car. A hefty, thuggish man then pressed Blakewell against the door, the locks snapped shut and her phone, Apple watch and backpack were taken.
As they drove to the treatment center, the driver told her it was time to atone for being queer, using an offensive epithet. “I still feel really bitter toward my family,” Blakewell said.
In second act, Russian activist group Pussy Riot protests Ukraine war
Alexandra faced similar deception.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I was in a really vulnerable state mentally at that time.”
Conversion therapy has been banned in 22 U.S. states and in 12 countries, with many others planning national bans, according to Global Equality Caucus, an international network of lawmakers that supports equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.
Last month, Konstantin Boikov, a lawyer with DELO LGBT+, fled Russia for New York after homophobic threats and abuse. (He does not identify as gay.) Tomatoes and eggs were hurled at his apartment door, and abusive notes and severed chicken heads were also left there.
He said he feared imprisonment by Russian authorities or homophobic violence if he stayed.
Jailed for 7 years, pacifist artist to Russian court: ‘I’m freer than you’
“We cannot continue our activity as an organization,” said Boikov, one of five DELO LGBT+ activists now based in New York, who serves as lawyer to both Blakewell and Alexandra as they pursue legal action. “So our members will act individually, helping people as lawyers or human rights activists.” No client will be abandoned, he said.
“The state is trying to convince the population that all the country’s ills all come from these enemies,” Boikov said, “so that people unite around one leader, without thinking.”
Alexandra was freed in June after she broke a staircase fitting and threatened managers that she would continue to break more things unless she was released. Her parents still shun her.
Blakewell escaped a month after she was abducted but was quickly caught and beaten so severely some of her teeth were broken. She tried twice more and was beaten again. She won her freedom by calling police from a staffer’s cellphone that was left lying around, insisting on rescue until they finally came.
Before her imprisonment, Alexandra was proudly transgender. After her freedom, she said she tried to mentally break free of the “conversion” therapy, “but I failed.”
“Today I feel like my transgender identity has some sort of damage,” she said. “It feels painful.”
Some of these young people are fleeing the country, looking for safety in the West.
Former residents say conditions behind high concrete walls are like small unregulated prisons, designed for alcoholics, drug addicts, or people whose families see them as problems.
Many were tricked or abducted, then held for months. They recounted being beaten, humiliated or forced to read out confessions that they were destructive and selfish because of their “addiction” to their sexual or gender identity — mimicking rigid programs designed to combat drug and alcohol addiction.
Many of them emerged “somehow mentally broken,” believing there was something wrong with them, said Vladimir Komov, who formerly served as a rights lawyer at a prominent LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group DELO LGBT+, which shut its operations last week due to the ban.
A 2020 report by an independent United Nations expert found that conversion therapy was “deeply harmful … inflicting severe pain and suffering and resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage.” The report called for a global ban.
In time of war, Russia turns up aggression on transgender citizens
In President Vladimir Putin’s move to cement his rule and build a repressive, deeply conservative nation, he has singled out LGBTQ+ people as scapegoats alongside antiwar activists.
But the rhetoric is also part of Putin’s bid to enlist socially conservative nations in Africa and the Middle East to back Russia in its war against Ukraine. At the same, he hopes to divide liberal Western democracies by encouraging antipathy to LGBTQ+ rights.
In a Nov. 30 ruling, Russia’s Supreme Court endorsed a Justice Ministry application to ban the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, following other repressive laws. After the ruling, police raided LGBTQ+ venues in Moscow.
One movie streaming site, apparently fearing prosecution, placed an adults-only rating on “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic,” an animated children’s series, likely because of the pony Rainbow Dash’s rainbow mane and tail — the same colors as a Pride flag.
Before its closure, DELO LGBT+ handled 200 monthly requests for legal help from queer people. Of these requests, 7 percent said their families threatened to put them into treatment centers, tried to do so or had done so in the past, the group said.
“After these laws, the number of people facing threats to be put in such institutions has increased,” Komov said.
Ada Blakewell, a 23-year-old transgender nonbinary person, queer activist and journalist, who uses she and they pronouns, underwent nine months of conversion treatment, from August 2022 until May 2023, in a remote treatment center, Freedom Rehabilitation Center, in the Altai region of Siberia.
Blakewell said she was beaten, thrown into a nearby river as punishment and forced to perform physical exercises repeatedly “until all I could see is white and yet they forced me to do it over and over again.”
Those undergoing the treatment had to swim in the river daily at 8 a.m. before morning prayers, even in winter in subfreezing temperatures. She was given “manly” jobs like chopping wood and helping slaughter chickens, turkeys and pigs “to help myself to become a man.”
In one disturbing incident, she was forced to castrate a pig, after being told that she would see what transgender surgery was like.
“I was given a surgical knife and given instructions how to do it,” she said. “But I couldn’t finish it. I had a severe panic attack and from then on, I was getting more and more suicidal.”
Russia bans international LGBTQ+ movement as ‘extremist’
She was given neuroleptic drugs, designed for people suffering psychiatric illness.
“You could call me a prisoner,” she said.
Alexandra, 28, a Moscow transgender woman whose wealthy parents also rejected her gender identity, was forcibly held in several treatment centers for 21 months.
Alexandra, who agreed to describe her experience on condition that she be identified only by first name, spent 20 months in a center outside Moscow with about 60 other people, mainly drug addicts and alcoholics, which was staffed by former residents, who doled out punishments. They told her being queer was an addiction that would ruin her life.
Alexandra said was so heavily sedated she felt “like a zombie” and was constantly told she was sick. Other residents threatened to kill her. “I felt alone because people around me were from another world,” she said. “People were very distant. I was feeling like I’m canceled. I felt invalid.”
The accounts by Blakewell and by Alexandra could not be independently verified but were consistent with previous accounts in Russian independent media and by international rights groups about conversion therapy centers in Russia.
Blakewell said she had been tricked into going to the center by her mother, a business executive, who asked her to support her during heart surgery in a rural area of the Altai region. Her mother got out of the car. A hefty, thuggish man then pressed Blakewell against the door, the locks snapped shut and her phone, Apple watch and backpack were taken.
As they drove to the treatment center, the driver told her it was time to atone for being queer, using an offensive epithet. “I still feel really bitter toward my family,” Blakewell said.
In second act, Russian activist group Pussy Riot protests Ukraine war
Alexandra faced similar deception.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I was in a really vulnerable state mentally at that time.”
Conversion therapy has been banned in 22 U.S. states and in 12 countries, with many others planning national bans, according to Global Equality Caucus, an international network of lawmakers that supports equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.
Last month, Konstantin Boikov, a lawyer with DELO LGBT+, fled Russia for New York after homophobic threats and abuse. (He does not identify as gay.) Tomatoes and eggs were hurled at his apartment door, and abusive notes and severed chicken heads were also left there.
He said he feared imprisonment by Russian authorities or homophobic violence if he stayed.
Jailed for 7 years, pacifist artist to Russian court: ‘I’m freer than you’
“We cannot continue our activity as an organization,” said Boikov, one of five DELO LGBT+ activists now based in New York, who serves as lawyer to both Blakewell and Alexandra as they pursue legal action. “So our members will act individually, helping people as lawyers or human rights activists.” No client will be abandoned, he said.
“The state is trying to convince the population that all the country’s ills all come from these enemies,” Boikov said, “so that people unite around one leader, without thinking.”
Alexandra was freed in June after she broke a staircase fitting and threatened managers that she would continue to break more things unless she was released. Her parents still shun her.
Blakewell escaped a month after she was abducted but was quickly caught and beaten so severely some of her teeth were broken. She tried twice more and was beaten again. She won her freedom by calling police from a staffer’s cellphone that was left lying around, insisting on rescue until they finally came.
Before her imprisonment, Alexandra was proudly transgender. After her freedom, she said she tried to mentally break free of the “conversion” therapy, “but I failed.”
“Today I feel like my transgender identity has some sort of damage,” she said. “It feels painful.”
