Dad’s recovery from sex addiction

Sasha Borissenko: Why it has taken so long to ban conversion therapy
NZ Herald 8 August 2021
Thank heavens the days of using “gay” as a pejorative are long gone. But how far have we come in a legislative sense?

Last week, the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill passed its first reading despite the National Party’s efforts to change the wording so that parents would be protected from prosecution.

“Parents should be allowed to be parents and to explore sexuality and gender with their children,” Simon Bridges said, who supported the intent of the bill, not the specific legislative wording.

For those out of the loop – according to the NZ Justice Select Committee, conversion therapy is any practice or treatment that seeks to change, suppress, or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. This may include traditional counselling, therapy, or group discussion.

For now, the bill is off to a select committee, giving the public at large an opportunity to hold their peace, I mean, say their piece. Under the bill, it would be an offence to perform conversion practices on a child or young person aged under 18, or on someone with impaired decision-making capacity. An offence could lead to imprisonment.

Additionally, it would also be an offence (up to five years imprisonment) to perform conversion practices on anyone regardless of age where said practices have caused serious harm.

When the couple arrived in New Zealand in 2010, they discovered there was no support available to sex addicts. That’s when Lisa decided to make a career switch from marketing to a counsellor specialising in sex addiction.

Now, she helped about 30 clients a week from across the globe – some were addicts and others were partners of addicts. But, she said, there was still a massive shortage of counsellors with the expertise to help sex addicts. She said more specialists and more effective regulation of porn sites was needed, especially when it came to minimising the risk to children. “The porn children as young as 10 have access to is really scary. It can be violent and damage their understanding of healthy sexual relationships.”

Counsellors have told the Herald on Sunday they are being inundated with people seeking help for sex addiction since the Covid pandemic last year.
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sasha-borissenko-why-it-has-taken-so-long-to-ban-conversion-therapy/BF3OFRHIQNZSV2TOJEN7I3R7UA/