From China to Latin America clinics claim to offer ‘cures’ for homosexuality to vulnerable people. How are activists planning to stop them?

“The doctor took me into a small room then asked me to relax and focus on my breath. He told me to remember when I was having sex with a man. Suddenly I felt an electric shock. I jumped, wondering what had happened. He just smiled and told me that was how he would cure me of being gay.”

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When Yang Teng visited the Xinyu Piaoxiang clinic in the southern Chinese city of Chongqing in February 2014 he didn’t know what to expect. Yang hadn’t yet come out and was getting pressure from his parents to start a family. He had heard from others in the gay community that the “therapy” could “cure” him of homosexuality but his curiosity turned to terror when he realised that the treatment involved getting electrocuted, and he left before the session ended. He claims a full course of 30 hour-long session, with three or four electric shocks each, cost 30,000 yuan (£3,126).

Angry and determined to expose the clinic’s abuse of gay men and women, Yang sought to sue the clinic. In December 2014, a Beijing court ruled in his favour, declaring such treatments illegal, and demanding that the clinic give Yang 3,500 yuan (£359) in compensation and post an apology on its website.

Despite Yang and other activists’ hope that the case would stop the practise, the clinic continues to offer the therapy – at an even higher price – as do many other medical centres around the country. Although China legalised homosexual relations in 1997 and removed it from a list of mental illnesses in 2001, it is still considered taboo in wider society and many gay people feel pressured by their families to get married and have children.

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So while it has been difficult to stop the clinics offering this abusive practice, Yang claims the publicity surrounding the case is important to raise awareness of the issue and change public opinion. “Our aim during this campaign is to educate the public that gay people cannot be cured,” he explains. “Because we won the case and the media published this information, many parents of gay people now know that if they send their son or daughter to the clinic it is not legal.”

Unfortunately these kind of clinics are not just found in China, but all over the world. LGBT rights campaign group All Out are asking people to report “gay cure” activities happening around the world – whether they have had direct experience of conversion therapy in their local community or seen it reported in the media – on the Gay Cure Watch website. The database of incidences will then be studied and All Out will launch targeted campaigns against them.

All Out director Matthew Beard says the findings from the campaign show “gay cures”, which have been found to lead to anxiety, depression and suicide, is endemic in many developing countries.

No matter how many laws we have, people get to adulthood already poisoned by homophobia Sergio Viula

The practice is a particular problem in Latin America where the church is hugely influential. Brazilian Sergio Viula was targeted by evangelists when he was just 16. Although gay himself, he recalls how he was brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality was a sin. When he was 18 he became a pastor, married a woman and had two children.

He formed a movement with other members of the church that targeted gay people on the streets, outside nightclubs and at pride events. Those who agreed to convert were treated as if they were addicts and encouraged to purge themselves of anything associated with their old lives. That included throwing away magazines which might arouse gay feelings and cutting contact with friends connected to the gay community. The idea was to make people isolated, he explains, in order to manipulate them into being closer to the church.

When Viula was 34 he finally came out, divorced his wife and is now a leading LGBT activist living in Rio. In 2013, he helped campaign against legislation that would allow psychiatrists in the country to treat homosexuality as a disease and the bill was eventually withdrawn.

Viula applauds the law’s defeat in congress but says the fight against religious fundamentalism in Brazil will continue for many years to come. He says the power of the church extends to politicians afraid to go against it for fear of losing votes.

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The activist believes education is the key to ending “gay cure” therapy in Brazil. “No matter how many laws we have, people get to adulthood already poisoned by homophobia,” he says. “People need to understand from an early age that there is nothing wrong with someone being gay, lesbian or transgender.”

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In Ecuador, “gay cure” clinics may claim to offer spiritual redemption but are not run by religious organisations. Families will often force their children to go to privately run conversion therapy centres which have been found to use torture such as electrocution and submersion in ice-cold water as corrective measures for patients. The country’s health minister Carina Vance Mafla says that she’s received reports of women being raped at the centres.

Tatiana Cordero from the Urgent Action Fund has led research on gay rights in Ecuador and claims that although the government promised to shut down clinics in the country in 2012, little has changed and clinics are still being allowed to operate. She says the clinics make up to a $140,000 (£96,500) per month and some are even owned by government officials. Corruption, she says, is therefore a major obstacle and she calls for an in-depth investigation into the problem.

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Cordero believes legal reforms are urgently needed to put an end to gay conversion. She would therefore like to see a law passed in Ecuador that bans any therapy that claims to cure homosexuality. She says there is a constitutional law that forbids discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, but that is not currently enforced.

Activists globally may differ in their approach to ending gay conversion therapy, but they are united in their belief that educating people about the absurdity of the practice is paramount.

Crucially, Beard adds, campaigners need to reach out to families. He says: “Parents are often those responsible for sending their children to conversions, so we need to expose them to some of the realities of the practice through education.”

From 8-14 February the Guardian Global Development Professionals Network is highlighting the work of LGBT rights activists throughout the world. Follow the conversation at #LGBTChange.

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