In a landmark victory, a state jury in New Jersey found today that a provider of gay-to-straight conversion therapy violated the state’s consumer fraud law by offering services it claimed could change clients’ sexual orientation.
The jury ordered JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing), the group’s founder and a counselor to pay $72,400 to compensate five plaintiffs for fees they paid to the group and for mental health counseling one of the plaintiffs needed afterward.
The SPLC filed the lawsuit – Michael Ferguson, et al., v. JONAH – in 2012. Brought under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, the case was the first of its kind nationally. It was heard before Superior Court Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr.
SPLC co-counsel were attorneys from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Lite DePalma Greenberg LLC.
The case was more about exposing consumer fraud than obtaining monetary damages.
“This verdict is a monumental moment in the movement to ensure the rights and acceptance of LGBT people in America,” said David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director. “Conversion therapy and homophobia are based on the same central lie – that gay people are broken and need to be fixed. Conversion therapists, including the defendants in this case, sell fake cures that don’t work but can seriously harm the unsuspecting people who fall into this trap.
“We’re proud of our clients, who survived these so-called treatments and had the courage to call to account the people who defrauded them with their false promises.”
The jury ruled that JONAH, its founder, Arthur Goldberg, and counselor Alan Downing violated New Jersey’s consumer fraud law by claiming their counseling services could cure clients of being gay. The plaintiffs are three young men who were harmed by the practice and two parents who paid fees to JONAH for their sons’ therapy, which cost $100 for weekly, individual sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions.
During the trial, men who had participated in the program testified to the same pattern of feeling joy at discovering a program that would purportedly turn them straight only to endure disappointment, frustration and depression as it failed. JONAH’s treatment strained family relationships for some men, leading them to blame family members for their sexual orientation.
“I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy,” plaintiff Benjamin Unger testified. “It was very harmful. It made me very depressed, and people have a right to know about it.”
Unger was told that one of the reasons he was gay was because he was too close to his mother. In one exercise, he was encouraged to beat a pillow – representing his mother – with a tennis racket.
“I had a huge gash and my hands were actually bleeding from hitting it so much,” said Unger, now 27. “People were standing around me and supporting me and kind of egging me on and … that was probably the worst thing I did in the JONAH program as far as how it affected me and my family and how it affected me emotionally.”
Unger described how he grew to resent his mother as a result of the treatment, stopped speaking to her for three months and even moved out of the house they shared.
He eventually quit the program, but depression and anxiety left him virtually bedridden for three months. Unger later received treatment for the trauma from a clinical psychologist
“This jury has affirmed what victims of conversion therapy heartbreakingly already know – charlatans’ attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity amount to nothing more than fraud,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. “Today’s decision is an extremely important legal victory in our march towards fairness, equality, and justice for LGBT people.”
Conversion therapy – a harmful and discredited practice that falsely claims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – has been denounced by every mainstream medical and mental health association, including the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association. The judge in this case previously ruled that misrepresenting homosexuality as an illness or disorder when marketing conversion therapy violates the state’s consumer protection laws. Today the jury agreed by finding these conversion therapy practitioners guilty of fraud.
