Conversion Therapy Patient Testimonial: A Daughter's Search for God, Love, and Herself

At the age of 17, Jessica Ritter found herself overwhelmed by the guilt and shame of a secret she could barely bring herself to name.

She worked as a lifeguard two years prior, where she met someone and found herself experiencing feelings she’d never had before for another girl. A devout Christian resolved to battle these emotions through prayer and her faith, Jessica’s silent pleas for clarity and relief at Watermark Church in her hometown grew louder and louder every Sunday. She eventually confided in her sisters, who encouraged Jessica to talk to their parents.

The night she finally mustered the courage to utter the words and verbalize her fears, 17-year-old Jessica sat her parents on their living room couch. They thought she might be pregnant. Then they asked if it was drugs. When she finally said the words, they cried, she cried, they prayed, and they cried some more. 

The next day, the church was in their house.

Less than a week later, Jessica was enrolled in two conversion therapy programs at once.

Snapshot of This True Story:

• Raised in a close-knit evangelical Christian family in Dallas, Jessica attended Watermark Church and was deeply committed to her faith. When she came out at 17, her church immediately connected her parents with both a licensed conversion therapist and a weekly church group program called Celebrate Recovery.

• From age 17 to 20, Jessica saw a licensed therapist who specialized in conversion therapy – twice a week during the first year, plus weekly church group sessions. Her parents found the therapist through a family friend at Watermark, and the church signed off on her.

• In the church group, she was the only teenager and the only person there because of who she was attracted to, placed among adult women as old as 68 who were working through addiction, alcoholism, and other struggles.

• The therapy blamed Jessica’s attraction to women on her close relationship with her father, her complicated relationship with her mother, and sexual abuse she had experienced in third grade. She had memories of being attracted to women that predated the abuse, but this went unaddressed.

• She lost about 40 pounds during the process. Her conversion therapist told her she looked so much more healthy, and so much more feminine, and treated the rapid weight loss as a sign of progress.

• Jessica learned years later that the therapist had secretly met separately with her parents to discuss the private sessions, a blatant violation not only of her patient’s trust but also doctor-patient confidentiality laws.

• The therapist had diagnosed her with depression and started her on medications, a combination of three different prescriptions she would take for roughly ten years.

• Jessica had two suicide attempts during this period. Both were largely ignored.

• After coming out again at 21, Jessica worked to rebuild her life and became the Texas Ambassador for Born Perfect, an organization fighting to end conversion therapy.

When the Church Shows Up the Next Morning

Jessica grew up at Watermark, a large megachurch in Dallas where being attracted to the same sex was framed as a struggle rather than simply who someone is. Members would stand at the pulpit and talk about having been redeemed from it, describing their loving spouses as proof of transformation. That was the model handed to Jessica the morning after she told her parents who she was.

She wanted the therapy to work. She is clear about that.

"I was willing to give it a shot," she said, "because I'm 17 years old and I truly have a spiritual relationship with God. And at the time was super, super committed to Watermark and Christianity. So I wanted this to be successful because ultimately life would be easier."

She was also terrified of the alternative. This was before marriage equality. Watermark had taught her what her future could look like, and none of it was what she wanted. On top of that, she was a senior heading to college and was afraid that if she was seen to be failing, she would be told she wasn't well enough to leave. She had everything to lose.

Two Programs at Once, For Three Years

The licensed therapist specialized in conversion therapy and had been referred through a family friend who also attended Watermark. The church signed off on her. Jessica saw her twice a week that first year.

In individual sessions, the therapist worked from the standard conversion therapy framework: that Jessica's attraction to women had identifiable causes in her family history and personal past. In her case, those were her close relationship with her father, a complicated dynamic with her mother, and sexual abuse she had experienced in third grade, when she was molested by her mother's tennis partner's son. Her family had never sent her to therapy after the abuse. They did, however, send her to therapy when she told them who she was attracted to.

What the therapy never grappled with was that Jessica had clear memories of being attracted to women before the abuse ever happened. That inconvenient timeline went unacknowledged. Instead, therapists pushed her to write a detailed history of her family that cast her parents as the cause of her orientation. "I wrote the worst thing I think I've ever written," she said. "If anyone ever read this, my parents would be so hurt. This is not really how I feel, but they're asking me to write this."

Simultaneously, in the Celebrate Recovery group at Watermark, she was the only teenager and the only person there for the reason she was. Everyone else was working through addiction to alcohol, drugs, or sex, or processing shame from other difficult chapters of their lives. The oldest woman in the group was 68. "These are the people I'm getting lumped in with," Jessica said.

The Costs of Trying

Around six months in, when she had expected to feel some change and didn't, the self-hatred set in. Her parents had told her not to tell anyone what she was going through, because naming it as a real part of who she was would make it definitive. So she was isolated from her friends, many of whom drifted away during the process without ever knowing why. She started lying as a matter of survival, a habit she says she relied on for the better part of five years.

She lost about 40 pounds during the course of the therapy. Her conversion therapist looked at her and said she looked so much more healthy, so much more feminine. She was also expected to date men to demonstrate progress. She found herself dating a guy and a girl at the same time.

Around nine months in, still being told she was doing well, the therapist was also meeting privately with her parents to report on her sessions. Jessica didn't find out until years later. "That's so illegal," she said simply. At around that same point, the therapist diagnosed her with depression for the first time in her life and put her on medication, eventually three different prescriptions, for roughly ten years.

She had two suicide attempts. Both were largely ignored.

Meanwhile, she was being sent out by the youth group to speak publicly, and a number of those messages were aimed at the people in her exact situation, because performing conviction was another way to prove she was changing. "I was terrified," she said. "I would spend hours and hours in prayer before I spoke because I was like, if God knows my secret and if I get in the pulpit, I'm gonna be struck dead."

When she came home from college for breaks, her friends told her it took about two months after each trip home before she seemed like herself again. "I would say I was addicted to lying for probably five years of my life," she said. "They didn't give me the space to be honest. And that was something that was really harmful."

What Conversion Therapy Did to Her Family

Jessica is clear that her parents loved her. That has never been the question.

But conversion therapy built a wedge between them that the family was ultimately unable to work through. Her siblings, after she came out for the second time, told her they no longer trusted her, without ever fully reckoning with the fact that they hadn't given her a safe environment to be honest. The years of lying she had learned during and after therapy made her an easy target for that accusation.

Jessica made the devastating decision to cut off her parents and siblings entirely.

"Your parents are supposed to be the ones that love you unconditionally," she said. "So losing them has been one of the most heartbreaking and difficult phases of my life ever. But I do think the conversion therapy was the beginning of the end."

A Faith She Found for Herself

What the programs did not manage to take from Jessica was her belief in God. They bent and warped it, but they did not break it entirely.

In college, studying religious studies and political science, she worked through biblical translation and theology courses, trying to think her way to an honest answer. She even tried atheism deliberately for a period and found she couldn't sustain it. She had encountered God in her own life in ways she was not willing to set aside.

"Finally I had to be like, okay, God," she said. "I'm not even gonna ask for a certain answer. Just show me what your truth is." What came back was a quiet peace she hadn't known during the years when a licensed therapist was calling her weight loss progress and sharing her private sessions with her parents.

Today, with years of real, caring therapy behind her and a chosen family around her, Jessica is more at home in herself than she has ever been. She lives with her wife in Texas, married in a Christian ceremony. She is the Texas Ambassador for Born Perfect. And she carries a faith that, for the first time, is entirely her own.

"I have a better spiritual connection with God today than I've ever had in my entire life," she said.