A Window Into 'Ex-Gay Therapy'

First George Alan Rekers, now this: Truth Wins Out, an organization dedicated to fighting “ex-gay” organizations, has published a report in which two former clients of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) accuse the group’s lead therapist of sexual misconduct. According to clients Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, the therapist, Alan Downing, encouraged them to undress and fondle themselves in front of him. “He was encouraging me, ‘it’s OK Ben, you can take your shirt off’… here was a man that was much older than me, and I was around 20,” Unger says. “At that point, I was just staring at a mirror with my shirt off and he was right behind me staring at the mirror with me at my body. Then telling me to look at my body and feel my body. It was weird.” Levin’s account is similar: “While I was standing there without my clothes on, he asked me to touch my genitals. Once again, I communicated that I was not comfortable with it. And he was like, you know, ‘just feel yourself. Just feel it for a second. So, you can grasp your masculinity physically.’”