UK Ban on Conversion Practices: Survivors Speak Out

Two survivors of conversion practices in England have described lasting psychological harm inflicted by religious groups that subjected them to prayer rituals, aversion techniques and public shaming in attempts to alter their sexual orientation — as the UK government advances a draft bill to ban such practices in England and Wales.

Gail Yorke, now in her fifties, paid several hundred pounds in 2006 to attend what she understood to be a ten-day Christian retreat near Lancaster. She was 37, a single mother, and seeking respite. What followed was an unsolicited group exorcism that would haunt her for nearly two decades.

After confiding in a retreat mentor about her sexuality, Yorke was surrounded by leaders who placed their hands on her and declared she was possessed by “the demon of homosexuality.” She fled the building, bolted her bedroom door, and drove away without telling anyone. For months afterward, she relived the scene in recurring nightmares. She later self-harmed. She describes coming close, had she enrolled in a subsequent discipleship programme with the now-defunct organisation Exodus International, to taking her own life.

The psychological mechanism was precise and durable. Shame, induced systematically, persisted long after the acute episode ended.

Augustine Tanner-Ihm’s account follows a different but structurally similar pattern. In 2013, then a 23-year-old American theology student on a religious placement in Liverpool, he was directed by a church leader to attend a weekly support group for men and women experiencing “same-sex attraction.” His UK visa and housing were tied to the placement church. Refusal was not a practical option.

Tanner-Ihm left red welts on his wrist. Three months in, on Bonfire Night, he stood watching fireworks and contemplated suicide. He has since become a church minister. He was due to marry this summer. The relationship ended six weeks before the ceremony, in part, he says, because of trauma originating in that Liverpool terraced house twelve years ago.

“It affects me every day,” he told this publication. “Without a doubt, I still feel shame if I ever have feelings for a guy.”

These accounts are not historical curiosities. New data from a UK LGBT+ helpline found that 68 percent of conversion practice cases it analysed between 2022 and 2025 were current, recent or ongoing. The practices documented range from informal prayer interventions to structured group programmes. They target gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people across religious communities and, increasingly, outside them.

In June 2025, the UK government published a draft bill to criminalise conversion practices in England and Wales, joining Canada, France, New Zealand and a growing number of jurisdictions that have legislated against them. The bill is framed around protection from physical, sexual, economic and psychological harm. More than 25 health and psychotherapy organisations in the UK — including the Royal College of Psychiatrists — have already declared such practices both ineffective and harmful.

Saba Ali, Chair of the Ban Conversion Practices Coalition, welcomed the bill as “a starting point, not a finish line,” while cautioning that the definitions and harm thresholds require rigorous scrutiny. “A conversion practice is a treatment, practice or service aimed at changing or suppressing who someone is, with the destination chosen before you walk into the room,” she said. “We have waited eight years.”

The bill’s drafting arrives against a backdrop of persistent public misconception. Yorke notes that many people still associate conversion practices with the era of Alan Turing — electric shock treatment, chemical castration, state-sanctioned persecution. The contemporary reality is quieter, more diffuse and no less damaging. It operates through pastoral networks, informal support groups, prayer circles and retreat programmes. It targets women as well as men, transgender people as well as gay and lesbian individuals. It extracts its toll not through electrodes but through shame, isolation and the systematic erosion of self-worth.

Yorke married her wife Tina in 2024, in an affirming church that had become part of her recovery. She now volunteers with Open Table, a network of inclusive faith communities. She is candid about what remains. “I’m not 100% past what happened to me,” she said. “But I’m certainly big enough and strong enough to hold my own now.”

Tanner-Ihm carries the same unresolved weight with rather less resolution. He built the life he wanted — ordained ministry, a faith he defended against those who weaponised it — but the damage done in three months in Liverpool has compounded across twelve years of adult life. The draft bill cannot undo that. It can, if enacted with sufficient rigour, prevent the same institutions from doing the same thing to someone else this week.

The Galop helpline supports LGBTQ+ people experiencing abuse or violence, including conversion practices. Telephone: 0800 999 5428. Email: help@galop.org.uk.