Update: Matthew has notified us of retractions he has been asked to make to his original comments. The original interview video is now unavailable but you can still view it on the archive of this article here. The relevant material starts at about 19:20. Please see the details of his retraction here.
Recently, on Christy Carlson Romano’s podcast Vulnerable, former Disney actor Matthew Scott Montgomery described his experience with reparative therapy with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Jr., the son of the well-known reparative therapist and apologist. Montgomery described the practice as Christian, and claiming to treat Hollywood stars seeking to become straight. He said, “This place specifically was for gay men who wanted to be turned from gay to straight and make it as a straight movie star in Los Angeles. That’s what this place was.”
He went on to describe rather elaborate precautions used to keep well-known people from bumping into others, people who presumably didn’t want to be “outed” and cause harm to their careers. But most interesting to us was his description of one phase of his therapy. Most of it up to this point sounded rather routine by Nicolosi’s standards, mostly talk.
However, he went on to describe what he called “electroshock therapy.” The description, however, sounds more like aversion therapy. The relevant discussion is during the five minutes after the starting point marked in the video above.
We have nothing but disdain for reparative therapy and there are no legitimate studies to suggest it is effective. That said, Nicolosi’s father was never known to use aversion therapy in his practice. Likewise, the procedures relayed by Montgomery have never been mentioned by any of his former patients, many of whom now consider themselves ex-ex-gay. It seems unlikely that Nicolosi’s father would have allowed this to go on.
Since Montgomery said his therapist was Nicolosi’s son, this may indicate that things have changed since his father’s passing. We have contacted Nicolosi to ask for his response but have not yet heard back. We will add any response to this post if and when we get one. As we said in an earlier post, aversion therapy is ineffective and its use at their clinic would signal a change in direction. We will discuss more about the changes Nicolosi’s son has made in a planned upcoming post.
He said, he came out to his parents at 18. He is born in March 1978, so it would be 1996.
And then he talk about a rainy day in March 2010 and his mother collapsed, sobbing. And then his father put the research on the table.
I am confused with the time.
Hi, thanks for commenting. I had to look over the timeline myself. Where did you see that he came out to his parents at age 18? From what I can gather, he came to LA in 1997 to try for an acting career. His big break was in a play called Yellow in 2010.
The part he played in Yellow brought about his coming out to his parents that same year. He was in therapy from approximately 2011 to 2012. There is very little provided concerning the ten years before or after Yellow.
This time frame would have placed him in therapy while Nicolosi Sr. was still alive and in control of the practice. As I mentioned in the post, this makes things rather confusing.