“In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old ‘effeminate boy’ named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a ‘play-observation room’ with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child,” wrote journalists Penn Bullock and Brandon Thorp for the Miami New Times, who exposed Mr. Rekers to the public.
According to reports, Mr. Rekers also used a reward/punishment system involving spanking a child to enforce masculine behavior.
“On one such occasion, his (Kraig) distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him… Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room,” read an account of the event in “Brain, Child Magazine.”
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