At 11, Grag Queen didn’t understand why she was being taken to church. Her parents were following the recommendation of a pastor who, according to her account, claimed that a demon inside her had to be cast out.
She has spoken about what happened next in interviews and in the video “Sobrevivente da Cura Gay”. The children waited in line with their eyes closed. Their mouths and heads were wetted, they received electric shocks, and they had to repeat phrases like “I am not gay”. She also speaks of fasting. Before that, according to PinkNews, her mother had already been called in to the school to be asked about her son’s behavior.
Her parents only found out what was happening in that therapy much later. She has said that she heard her father say he would rather have a dead son than a gay one, a phrase that PinkNews reports translated into English and that we couldn’t confirm in the original Portuguese.
Grag, now the host of Drag Race Brasil, describes what she experienced as the crime of torture. Even so, she does not plan to sue those responsible: through the project “Fim da Cura”, she hopes to ensure that other LGBTQIA+ people don’t go through the same thing.
