Religion Enables Abuse in Lifetime's New Conversion Therapy Movie

Cable TV network Lifetime tackles a harrowing story on the abuses of conversion therapy in the upcoming film, Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story.

Based on the memoir Saving Alex, the film tackles the real-life story of Alex Cooper who innocently comes home with a hickey from her girlfriend, which forces her to come out to her Mormon parents. She's promptly exiled from her family, then shipped off to a conversion therapy home in Utah. What begins as her parents fearing for her eternal salvation rapidly escalates into the 15-year-old suffering horrific child abuse from her guardians who just want her "to change course."

Conversion therapy believes itself to be "curing" LGBTQ people of their "hellbound" mindsets and/or mental illnesses, a theoretical practice rejected by every major medical and mental health organization according to the Human Rights Campaign. Cooper was subjected to verbal and physical abuse in the home for eight months.

"You're so worried about the next life that you can't see what's happening to me in this one," says Alex so poignantly in the trailer.

And no, this heartbreaking tale isn't of the distant past. Cooper's story is under a decade old and the book was just published in 2016. Conversion therapy is still legal in 32 states around the U.S., including Utah.

At a Los Angeles screening for the film, the cast and crew, as well as the real-life Alex Cooper (now 24) and attorney Paul Burke, were thankful to the Lifetime network for bringing the movie's important message into homes nationwide and hope that the film will help change hearts in minds in Utah and across the country. 

Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story premieres September 28 at 8pm ET/PT on Lifetime. Watch the trailer below: