Parents get sentenced to prison for vicious abuse used to turn their gay son straight

An Italian court has sentenced the parents of a gay teen to prison for a series of abusive acts in attempt to force their son to be straight.

Italian publication La Stampa detailed how the now 18-year-old’s father read his diary when he was 14 and discovered he was gay. Afterward, he forced him to go for runs in the middle of the night, banned him from shaving, made him show his genitals, and also forced him to read pages from his diary out loud.

Related:

Italy orders cities to stop recognizing children of same-sex couples

People were protesting in the streets.

The teen’s father also took over his social media accounts and began controlling who he spoke to and where he went.

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After the father was turned down by a psychologist who told him homosexuality was not an illness, he then told his son that he must prove to him he’d slept with a girl within a month. The teen could not handle it anymore and turned to the school psychologist for help.

The father has been sentenced to two years in prison, and the mother has been sentenced to one year and four months for witnessing the abuse and doing nothing to stop it.

The judge, however, granted the couple conditional suspension of their sentence if they take a year-long psychological and remedial course.

Italy’s far-right government has contributed to the perpetuation of homophobia in the nation as of late.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and Italy’s first woman prime minister, was elected in late 2022. She made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric a cornerstone of her campaign, opposing adoption by same-sex couples as well as marriage equality. She has called civil unions “good enough” for LGBTQ+ couples.

The government has been cracking down on the rights of LGBTQ+ parents and has begun stripping those who are not genetically related of their legal rights. One couple spoke to the press about fleeing the country to avoid losing their children.