Survivors of conversion therapy have opened up about the decades of trauma they’ve faced after undergoing the practice, as Tasmanian MPs prepare to debate whether the therapies should be banned.

Glen Worrell’s story

Glen Worrell, 58, said he first had an awareness of being gay in his teens.

Coming from a conservative religious background, it was something he was led to believe was shameful.

“When I realised, it was a matter of suppressing and ignoring, until I had the conversation with the assistant minister of the church I was attending,” he told iHeart Tassie.

“When you’re involved with church communities, [it’s] like your family … there’s a deep underlying fear of rejection and being cast away.

“You do anything, you turn yourself inside out to do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, which in this case was to become heterosexual.”

In his thirties, the conversation was the start of 21 years of conversion therapy.

“From time to time, I would fly from Tasmania to Sydney and undergo the program they had and what I was finding, I was still gay,” Mr Worrell said.

“You’re never told it doesn’t work. Not once over all the years I was doing it, was I told it doesn’t work.”

One of the “treatments” he underwent, while in Tasmania, was an exorcism.

“It was in a private home in South Hobart … one person was taking notes, two people were praying, another person was observing,” he said.

“I accepted they knew what they were doing and I submitted to that process. It was frightening, terrifying actually. I was glad when it was over.

“I think I was there eight or nine hours altogether.

“There was also the question ‘did it work?’ Ultimately, the same sex attraction was still there.”

It wasn’t until 2018, at the age of 50, he finally accepted his sexuality.

“I realised I could no longer do this battle within myself. If I tried to, I wouldn’t be here anymore,” Mr Worrell said.

“That was the moment I experienced a flood of peace and liberation. It was like the war was over.

“I was no longer going to turn myself inside out to try to be somebody I wasn’t.”

Bronwyn Larkins story

Bronwyn Larkins realised she was a lesbian when she was a teen.

“I had a crush on a schoolmate, and she and I almost kissed and her mum walked in, and rang my mother,” she said.

“The next thing, I’m at hypnotherapy, to “support me through my time of confusion.

“I had about five or six hypnotherapy sessions and I had a tape that I had to listen to every night.”

For the next 15 years, Ms Larkins operated as though the conversion therapy had worked, and lived her life as a straight woman.

“I lived a lie,” she said.

“Funnily enough, those relationships with men didn’t work.

“I have a beautiful grown-up son now out of that period.”

Though the conversion therapy only lasted about five months, the effects lingered, decades on.

“Unfortunately, I had mental health issue after mental health issue, I’ve got complex post-traumatic stress disorder,” she said.

“12 years of solid work to get to a point where I can actually say I am okay, it doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem just.”

Push for a ban set to hit Tasmanian Parliament

Last month the Tasmanian Greens tabled a bill to ban conversion therapy, and it will be debated in parliament later this year.

Already Liberal MPs, Felix Ellis, Michael Ferguson and Guy Barnett have come out saying they won’t be supporting it.

They’ve claimed the bill would infringe on religious freedom, something Ms Larkins says is misleading.

“The bill’s really clear, nothing will change for a minister of religion inside a church to be able to say ‘our belief is this’,” she said.

“All the legislation says is you cannot say someone is broken and that you have a cure, because that’s nonsense … I was never broken, none of us are broken.

“Also they talk around gender affirming care and putting a stop on doctors and medical staff.

“The bill says we’re not going to touch the medical profession, we’re going to leave it up to AHPRA or those medical people to make decisions.”