As a clinician within a specialised Victoria police unit for mental health emergencies, Ahern, 46, deals with people who are suicidal, acting erratically, or in a state of crisis.

But 10 years ago, he was in a mental health crisis of his own.

Years of gay conversion therapy, which began when Ahern was just 15, had left him in a state of inescapable self-loathing.

Convinced he could be straight if he tried – and prayed – hard enough, Ahern underwent numerous counselling sessions at a Sydney Christian Life Centre, part of a group of churches associated with today's Pentecostal Australian Christian Churches.



In his early twenties, he married a woman, encouraged by the idea that if he settled down and got married, everything would be OK.

But it wasn't, and Ahern crumbled into a "state of despair".

He would get home from work and cry himself to sleep in a similar mental state to the people he had just spent hours helping.

"I became suicidal myself. I thought, this has got to stop. I can’t do this any more," Ahern told BuzzFeed News.



"If you can work so hard and ask God to change you and fix you and he doesn’t, there are two outcomes of that: one, he’s a cold-hearted bastard; or two, there’s actually nothing wrong with me."

