Amanda Booker (Image: Georgia Department of Corrections)
A lesbian is suing a police department she says sent her to an evangelist for ex-gay therapy.
In April, 2010, the family of Amanda Booker requested she be given therapy for her drug addiction. A court order commanded Bartow County Sheriff’s Department to take her to Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital in Rome, GA.
She suffered seizures on the way, however, and was taken instead to Cartersville Medical Center. It was there, Booker alleges, that police officers prevented her from contacting her female partner and made “numerous threats concerning her lesbian relationship.”
From there, Booker was taken to stay in a private home for a week and then to the home of evangelists Chris and Donna McDowell, who allegedly tried to “convert Ms Booker from being a lesbian” for a fee of $600, paid by the county.
Booker was arrested a few days later after she “escaped” and returned to her mother’s house.
A lawsuit filed by Booker’s attorney, Anthony Perrotta, on May 13 claims that the Bartow County Sheriff’s Department considered it “normal procedure … to punish homosexuals and persons holding different religious beliefs.” The lawsuit continues:
At all times relevant to this action, it was the normal procedure, practice and custom of Defendants Bartow County, [County Commissioner Clarence] Brown, and [Sheriff] Clark Milsap to harass homosexuals taken into custody, to mandate that homosexuals taken into custody refrain from living as homosexuals, and to forbid them from maintaining any homosexual relationships.
Sheriff Milsap told the GA Voice the charges were “the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” while Brown declined to comment.
Perrotta says his priority is to get Amanda Booker out of Pulaski State Prison, GA, where she has been held since October, 2010, on charges that include damaging a police vehicle — an incident that occurred during her arrest, which the lawsuit portrays as aggressive, humiliating and without warrant.
Update: Thanks, Bene Diction, for notifying us of this website for Mercy House, the ministry run by Chris and Donna McDowell, the couple alleged in the lawsuit to have held Booker and subjected her to “ex-gay” treatment.
Second Update: The Mercy House website is now disabled. There is no Google cache.
This is a tough one…. on the one hand, it’s not like her complaint is completely unbelievable; on the other, a drug addict in prison for damaging a police vehicle doesn’t make for a particularly trustworthy witness either.
This is the webpage of the couple who call themselves evangelists and who she was taken too against her will.
https://www.foreverblessedministries.com/MercyHouse.html
If you use Google maps – there is a tiny Baptist Church directly across the road.
Did the damage to the police vehicle happen when she was arrrested without a warrant and slammed against the cruiser?
The story states she was charged with more than damage to a cruiser, and that she has been 8 months in a state prison, but doesn’t state what other charges are.
If police did this to me, I’d fight them with every ounce of energy even while knowing it would be against my best interests. It may not be the best use of survival skills, but survival skills would be in play. Is this is the only drug treatment/rehab Georgia has to offer? It is sobering and frightening that police are permitted to defy court orders and parental requests and pay their religious friends to house someone against their will and call it treatment.
It is frightening… I’m just not yet convinced it happened. I trust neither her nor the sheriff’s department on this.
@Bene D
Yes, apparently the damage did occur while she was being arrested. I’m going to add that to the report, actually, as it is pertinent
interesting. When I tried to look at the MercyHouse website a page comes up that says, “sorry, this website has been disabled.”
@Brian Thanks for that. It had very little information anyway. No Google cache, unfortunately.