An Appeal of a Victim of Coercive Conversion Program, Saying the Reality

An Appeal of a Victim of Coercive Conversion Program, Saying the Reality 

 

 

  To take someone who do not want to be converted to coercive conversion programs, their families bind and abduct victims with handcuffs, eye patches, ropes or so on. The victims explained that counselors which conducted coercive conversion programs incited their families. Victim Ko kidnapped by her family appealed to be confined in a isolated and small room for a week and to got terrible human rights abuse. The following article is an whole appeal of Victim Ko.

 

I am an victim of coercive conversion program by my family in May of 2014.

 

I was persecuted by my family who were different from my religious view during my religious life in Shincheonji Church.

 

My parents who had done abuses and assaults suddenly acknowledged my faith and warmly relaxed me.

 

What I know after it is that my parents’ actions was instigated by Guri Heterodox Church for me not to be aware and escape.

 

Instead of admitting my faith, I promised to go the church from my house and my parents promised not to kidnap and persecute me.

 

But in May 18, 2014, at 2AM my family hided my belongings including cell phone and catched my body not to move when I was sleep. 

 

 

At the moment, I was so scared and shouted to live and cried to resist, but my mother and third sister blocked me with handcuffs and ropes.

 

I cried with a husky voice to resisted and beseeched to my family, but they kept to bind me. My face, hands, feet, and body were tied and I was kidnapped in a van which was unlockable to a unknown place.

 

During moving, they made me listen to a harsh sound by earphones for not hearing sound of a navigation. In a toll gate, they turned on praises aloud to hide my unpredictable actions.

 

Though I said to want to go a toilet, my third sister took off my pants in front of my family, spreaded my legs, and had me feel shame.

 

 

At 5AM, I was taken to other unknown place and handcuffed with my sister in a small room. The house where people did not live for a long time was so old and there were disgust livings like rats and centipedes.

 

All transparent windows were blocked by plywoods so I could not see outside, and I could not go outside because the door had triple locks.

 

I coud not wash and eat at all in the small room. When I wanted to a toilet, they gave a black plastic bag to relieve myself.

 

The only time I was free was when a conversion counselor came. At first time, he had said the conversion time would have be 2 days but as I did not be converted, the time was extended more and more.

 

He changed his words that coercive conversion had to be done until I was converted, saying to my family, “The woman fell firmly into cult so the time would be a month.”

 

I had to pretend to be converted for getting out this place because I was so tired physically and psychologically. they who had not trusted me at first had me go outside, when I kept calm so they thought I was converted.

 

It was the air and sunshine that I felt in a week. His true identity as a conversion program counselor came to light when the program was over. He were from a place called the Guri Church, which focused on the conversion counseling and consisted of converted people.

 

The handcuffs I was wearing, the keys, the cloned phones my parents used, the cars, the blindfolds, the ropes, were not readily available, so he secretly prepared them and handed them to my parents without harming his church.

 

Later, my parents gave him money in the name of a thank-you donation.

 

In addition, they(conversion counselors) encouraged me to stop studying and attend education in their church for eight months and persuaded my parents. The details from the preparation to the completion of the conversion education were also under their detailed instructions.

 

He also said, "I came to Gangwon-do on a business trip" when he got a call, and he saw it as their business.

 

They don't confine and educate me for the purpose of a pure church. It's clearly different from the ideas of religion, and if they're truly honorable, they won't be able to conceal themselves and educate people.

 

 

What was most difficult for me was the situations in which my loved ones and first-time visitors drove me and forced me to “correct because you did wrong.” I have never broken the laws prescribed by society in my life and have never committed any crime.

 

But they treated me like a sinner and treated me less than a sinner.

 

After I went to the coercive conversion program, I had to stop studying because I was rumored to be in school, and I lost my cell phone and lost contact with my loved ones.

 

Above all, my grandmother and my relatives who found out this situation made me unable to live at home by treating me as a mental patient. However, parents still believe in counselors’ words and still communicate with them without reflecting on these actions.

 

I can't leave them as they are, who consider the illegality legal and pass their sins to other people. I appeal like this.