Conversion "therapy" is banned in three states and territories, but no national ban exists.
It is based on the idea that a person's sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed, suppressed or eradicated through practices ranging from psychiatric treatments to spiritual intervention.
These three Australians prefer the term conversion "practice".
They say there was nothing therapeutic about what happened to them.
A young girl sits, waiting in hope that the demons will leave her body.
She wants to be free from her sins.
Through prayer and holy water, attempts are made to rid her of "evil spirits".
By the age of 21, Tasmanian Erenie Hiras has gone through five exorcisms, some lasting multiple days.
"I had Satan in me, so the exorcisms were to cast these demons out," she says.
"I was told that I had demons inside of me, the spirits of lesbianism.
"But I didn't want to be gay, so of course, I went along with it."
Growing up in a loud Greek household, Erenie always felt like the odd one out.
Often scolded by her family for not fitting into the expected gender role, she was labelled a tomboy.
This all changed when Erenie's friend invited her to attend church with her family.
Taking her in as their own, this new family treated her as their daughter, and for the first time in her life, Erenie felt accepted.
But this acceptance she had long craved was short-lived, as the family's stance on homosexuality was clear: Erenie had to stop being gay.
The new family promised to help change her sexual identity.
With their support, this is when Erenie's journey of exorcisms, prayers and counselling began.
'Get God in and gay out'
But after years of failed conversion "therapy", It was suggested that Erenie went to a place called Mercy Ministries.
The people around Erenie, who she loved and trusted, told her to go because this place could "fix" her.
She left Tasmania to join Mercy Ministries, without her parents' knowledge.
It was a decision that would change Erenie's life forever.
On its website, Mercy Ministries said it treated women aged 16 to 28 years old by "providing homes and care for young women suffering the effects of eating disorders, self-harm, abuse, depression, unplanned pregnancies and other life-controlling issues".
Some former clients of Mercy Ministries claim they were denied professional help and were instead exorcised and told simply to repent their sins.
Bad publicity and an investigation by the ACCC forced the closure of a controversial counselling program linked to the evangelical Hillsong church.
"It was a kind of cross between the army, a psych ward and a convent," Erenie says.
"There's a big group of women out there that are still healing from their stay."
She says she still has "repetitive nightmares about it to this day", years later.
"They made us believe that we'd actually chosen to be gay, and it was a direct result of our fathers not hugging us enough when we were little and from listening to K.D Lang in the 90s, along with equally other absurd theories."
Being one of the few people to graduate, Erenie says she was "healed of my lesbianism".
"At last all my work had paid off, I'm not queer anymore, I'm normal, I'm not disgusting."
But it did not take long for her to realise nothing had changed, and she was still same-sex attracted.
For Erenie, this felt like the ultimate failure.
Erenie went through around five years of conversion "therapy".
"I think we've lost enough of our people to this, and those of us that do survive have a hell of a time, [a] hell of a journey to try and heal," she says.
"Your sexuality or gender identity should be as unimportant as your eye colour — it doesn't matter."
'This is still happening'
Three states and territories have passed legislation banning conversion practices — Victoria, Queensland and the ACT — and legislation has been proposed in other states.
The Tasmanian Law Reform Institute has suggested reforms to Tasmania's laws around conversion practices.
It's a proposal welcomed by Erenie, who has joined the fight to change Tasmania's laws around this type of "therapy".
"I'm shocked that this is still happening in my lifetime; it belongs in the dark ages.
"It's horrifying."
'I've made an appointment for you'
It was the late 1990s.
When the television was clicked on in a conservative household in southern Tasmania, protests filled the screen as the LGBTQIA+ community campaigned for homosexuality to be decriminalised in the state — something that was only achieved in 1997.
Bron Larkins's mother labelled it the "gay agenda" and said the campaign was to "corrupt families, corrupt children and recruit children".
From a very young age, Bron knew she was different from her six sisters.
She was still coming to terms with her sexual identity.
It all started with a harmless crush on a girl at her school.
"My mother found out and she was horrified. She said: 'I've made an appointment for you with this hypnotherapist, you're just confused.'"
"Every time I would come out from hypnotherapy, I would feel physically ill like I wanted to vomit."
The conversion "therapy" went for eight sessions, and Bron was given a tape recording to listen to every night.
The hypnotherapist's voice played on repeat, wearing her down to believe that homosexuals had something inherently broken within their brain, they had experienced family trauma, or that they were just pretending to be same-sex attracted for attention.
"And worst of all, that homosexual people are paedophiles and that's what gay people did, recruit young children for that, which is not true at all," Bron says.
"It became so ingrained inside me that there was something wrong with me for feeling an attraction towards a person of the same gender.
It was at this point that Bron had her first mental health breakdown.
She wanted to die.
When she first stepped into the hypnotherapist's office, Bron was just 16 years old.
Now, almost in her 50s, the trauma she survived at such a young age still haunts her.
"Where people think conversion therapy happens, and it doesn't work and then the person's OK … I'm here to say they're not.
"It takes a lifetime to get over."
Bron wants to ensure young people don't have to go through what she did.
"We know that we've lost young rainbow children to suicide, because of these feelings when they get told that they're not good enough, or they need to pray to God, or they need to get some medical intervention."
She is calling for changes to Tasmania's laws for the protection of the LGBTQIA+ community as well as a person's right to religious freedom.
"It's about stopping this harmful practice of saying to somebody, 'You are broken, you are less than, you are worthless unless you're heterosexual, unless you're cisgendered.'
"The criminality for me is really important for survivors, as an acknowledgement from the government to say, 'Something bad happened to you, we acknowledge it, it was wrong.'"
"I just want to say to all survivors, or anybody right now within my rainbow family: we see you, we hear you, we know you.
"We know the pain you're going through.
"Whether you're transgender, non-binary, any different shade of the rainbow, you are beautiful, you are loved and you are worth life."
'It's OK Glen, things can be done'
An overwhelming feeling of loneliness has consumed Glen Worrell for most of his life.
He has never felt the love of a romantic relationship and has spent most of his time single and alone.
There's a reason for that.
For 21 years, Glen clung to the hope that conversion practices could change his sexual identity.
Raised on the family farm in regional New South Wales, Glen had a conservative upbringing which he described as "God, Queen, and country".
At age 12, he was sent to an all-boys boarding school, and it was here that he began to take issues of faith seriously.
But it was also at this time that Glen realised he had a secret.
"That secret was that there was just a very small percentage of guys that I was attracted to," he says.
"When I realised that, I was absolutely mortified.
"My sexuality was suppressed and deeply buried and in many ways switched off and ignored."
By the time he was in his early 20s, Glen was desperate for change and made attempts to be in heterosexual relationships.
When this failed, he turned to the church for help.
"I saw the assistant pastor of the church I was attending and shared what was going on with me," he says.
"I was given the number of the leader who led this ministry in Sydney for people who were same-sex attracted."
Glen travelled to the capital to start his journey with conversion practices.
He was taught the underlying reason for being same-sex attracted was because of a dysfunctional family upbringing.
And that "change is possible, that you can be healed, that you can become heterosexual".
"I believed change was possible, therefore I completely dedicated myself to the program," he says.
"You make relationships amongst the community, you're all in the same boat."
Packing his bags, Glen then moved to Launceston in northern Tasmania where he joined a new Christian community.
Confessing he was same-sex attracted, the group put him in touch with a ministry in the south of the state.
After hearing the ministry could "heal" homosexuality, Glen jumped in the car and drove to meet them.
"I experienced a nine-hour day of prayer that involved an exorcism.
"I felt very vulnerable, very helpless, I felt terrified."
Upon arriving back in Launceston that evening, he realised that nothing had changed.
Glen was still gay.
"You feel a loser, you feel guilt, shame, and it's that never-ending cycle of, 'It's my fault.'"
Desperate for change, he went back for another prayer session, this time in Launceston.
When the prayers did not work, Glen went back for more. He was stuck in the cycle.
"It profoundly affected my mental health and I was so lonely," he says.
"A member of my family actually suggested that I become a priest because that would resolve a lot of issues as far as being single and being spiritual.
"There's a great fear of eternal damnation and burning in hell forever and ever, hanging over your head."
But after 21 years of conversion practices, Glen realised he was still gay and nothing would change that.
He decided to embrace his sexuality.
"Had it not happened, my life would have been very different, without a doubt."
Glen says conversion practices in Tasmania are covert and hidden, so most members of the church community remain unaware of what is occurring behind closed doors.
He wants the practice to be banned.
"My hope is that nobody else has to go through what I went through," he says.
"I don't want anyone else to waste their life."
But there are those who do not want to see a ban.
'Criminalised for praying'
Andrew Corbett has been a pastor at Legana Christian Church for 27 years.
He believes a person's identity and gender can be changed.
"People have all kinds of confused sexual attractions, who also can find that that doesn't have to define them," he says.
"It's true that we uphold what Jesus Christ taught about gender and sexuality, that's very true.
A large number of international and some national jurisdictions have already banned conversion practices.
Now they are the focus of a Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report released today that accepted 182 submissions and proposed a change of law in the state.
The report notes that conversion practices were once part of mainstream medicine but are now "firmly rejected by mainstream science and medicine".
"The United Nations Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination reported that conversion practices are 'by their very nature, degrading, inhuman and cruel and create a significant risk of torture'," the report says.
The institute also stated that "LGBTQIA+ attributes are not faults or dysfunctions, conversion practices lack efficacy, and conversion practices involve serious risk of causing serious and lasting harm to those subject to them".
Pastor Corbett says if someone is praying "appropriately", it should not cause psychological damage.
He does not want conversion practices banned in Tasmania.
"I would find this utterly bewildering if praying for someone was equated to the same level of abuse as deprivation or torture, which are some of the examples on the extreme archaic end of conversion therapy," he says.
"In the 27 years that I've been pastoring here, we've never had any accusation of mistreating anybody and I certainly don't want to start if this became a bill and was introduced as an act."
"If someone's praying appropriately, that shouldn't cause any of this psychological, emotional or spiritual damage."
The Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report says some laws in the state already apply to conversion practices, but suggests reforms to others to ensure people are aware of their rights and duties.
The proposed reforms would not affect legitimate health care conducted by a qualified health professional, statements of faith, moral or philosophical doctrine or a parent's or guardian's supportive care, guidance or mentoring of a child.
Equality activist Rodney Croome is fighting to ensure Tasmania bans conversion practices, which he calls "barbaric".
"When I hear from survivors that they have been put through exorcisms because they're gay, or they've been sent off to camps interstate which are basically like prison … We have failed them as a society," he says.
In 2019, La Trobe University surveyed more than 6,000 LGBTQIA+ Australians aged between 14 to 21 years and included questions about their experience with conversion practices.
Around 4 per cent of the group had attended conversion practices through programs, group work, counselling and interventions that were aimed at changing their sexual or gender identity.
A survey of more than 800 LGBTQIA+ people commissioned by the Tasmanian government and released this year found that 5 per cent of those surveyed had undergone the practice.
Nearly 100 per cent of respondents to the state survey said they had been told their identity was the result of abuse or trauma or that they needed to be "fixed".
Mr Croome says while freedom of religion is an important democratic freedom in Australia, there is a "limit on every right and freedom".
"Conversion practice is an example of trauma inflicted on vulnerable people.
"I have many friends who are people of faith and, like others, they are surprised and horrified when they learn that conversion practices are still taking place.
"I think that most people of faith in Tasmania would find conversion practices distasteful, and would want them to end."
You can watch more of this story on video on demand.
Credits
- Reporting: April McLennan
- Photography/Videography: Luke Bowden & Owain Stia-James
- Graphic design: Paul Strk
- Digital production/editor: Daniel Miller
