Subscribe The couple both virgins did not consummate the marriage for seven years and then
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The couple, both virgins, did not consummate the marriage for seven years, and then only with the help of sex and relationship counselling. "Sex is a minute but vitally important part of a relationship," says Colin. "Lots of things were so right in my marriage." But not the sex. When it broke up, three years later, Colin told his sister and Diane's siblings that he was gay, but he never had an open conversation about it with his parents (both now dead). Today he wonders how he could ever have imagined he could make his marriage work.Soon after the divorce, he joined an encounter group - "the first time I'd been open about my sexuality in public" - and soon began an 18-month relationship with a man After several short affairs, he finally met Mark, 33 They've been together for four years "Thank God I'm in a good relationship. Before I came out I was so out of touch with myself, and everyone else If I'd had a choice, I wouldn't have chosen to be gay. There is still a part of me that sees it as an emotional disturbance."He believes that the aversion therapy certainly added to his anguish.
"The shock treatment contributed to screwing me up, and it's there in my subconscious It will haunt me to my dying day," he says "I know I've been harmed. I've had endless problems with my neck and shoulder, places the tension goes to I feel as if I've been robbed of the best years of my life But my arm wasn't twisted I agreed to it and I take responsibility for having done so. The worst fight was the one I fought with myself against my homosexuality."Unlike Peter, Colin feels no anger towards the medical establishment, just sadness. Indeed, he still praises Valerie Mellor's caring attitude to him.
"She once said she wished she could tell me to go out and give it a try, have sex with a man She couldn't, of course. Those were the times we were living in."COLIN's and Peter's experiences - and those of who knows how many other victims of aversion therapy - were dark secrets, and seemed set to remain so. In 1993, however, Peter Price read a newspaper report of a court case involving four armed forces personnel sacked for being homosexual. One of the four, a naval officer called John Beckett, had been sent to a Navy psychiatrist, where, he claims, he was offered electric shock therapy "I couldn't believe it was still going on," says Peter.
He contacted The Independent which reported on his experience; a television documentary, Dark Secret: Sexual Aversion, has also been made and will be broadcast this week.Beckett is taking his case to the court of human rights in Strasbourg, and in the meantime is refraining from public statements. A Defence Ministry spokesman commented: "Aversion therapy arose in the conversation ... but Commander Churcher-Brown, the Navy psychiatrist, told Beckett it was a completely discredited therapy he would never prescribe himself." The official MoD line is that "aversion therapy certainly is not offered to service personnel. Homosexuality is not an illness."It is, however, still a dischargeable offence in the armed forces, just as it was in 1962 when Gerald William Clegg-Hill was serving in the Royal Tank Regiment.