MAPLEWOOD, NJ – He was beaten, threatened, shamed for who he was, forced to watch violent pornographic imagery and subjected to electroshock treatment at the age of 13. Maplewood Township Committeeman Dean Dafis lived through gay conversion therapy and now is sharing his story in the hopes of ending what he calls an abusive, dangerous treatment and helping other survivors find strength and support.
Dafis, an attorney and advocate for many years, recently took to social media to share part of his experience after the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear King v. Murphy challenge against New Jersey’s ban on gay and transgender conversion therapy for minors.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, “conversion therapy,” sometimes known as “reparative therapy,” is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Such practices have been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization for decades, but due to continuing discrimination and societal bias against LGBTQ people, some practitioners continue to conduct conversion therapy. Minors are especially vulnerable, and conversion therapy can lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.
Dafis agreed to speak to Patch about his history and noted that despite the fact that his experience began decades ago, the “therapy” is still legal in dozens of states. To date, Connecticut, California, Nevada, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, Oregon, Illinois, Vermont, New York, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Washington, Maryland, Hawaii, New Hampshire and Delaware all have laws or regulations protecting youth from this practice. A growing number of municipalities have also enacted similar protections, including cities and counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, Florida, New York, Arizona, and Wisconsin.
“I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the melting pot of the 1970s,” Dafis said. “It was very urban, very diverse. It was a mix of Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Polish Americans, Mexican Americans and Greek Americans.”
Dafis and his family were among the Greek Americans and he said there was a pecking order as each immigrant group was trying to scrap their way into the middle class. Both of his parents worked multiple jobs to support the family and try to build a better life for Dean and his younger brother.
“My parents were off-the-boat immigrants. I was born here, first generation Greek-American,” Dafis said. “I learned English in the library alongside my parents.”
Of his childhood, Dafis noted there were no front porches. Only stoops. And backyards had more concrete than grass.
“But we learned a lot about life on those stoops,” Dafis said. “We were all just trying to figure it out.”
One of the things Dafis was trying to figure out, was his sexual identity, although he was too young to contextualize it.
“I Knew That I Was Different”
“I knew that I was different,” Dafis said. “I knew that the straight boys who were bullying me were telling me I was gay. I didn’t know what gay was. I knew I felt differently about men and women.”
Dafis said he was very honest and very transparent. He said he was naturally effeminate so there were many signs. At age 12, he came out to his parents, andDafis said they did what all people connected to a pious community do, they asked their pastor for help. In Dafis’ case, the church was Greek Orthodox.
“Especially in a community that hasn’t fully assmiliated and doesn’t speak the language well. You go to church,” Dafis said.
Dafis said there was a baptism and an exorcism and he was lectured on how to stand more masculine and speak more masculine and even how to hold the candle as an altar boy in a more masculine manner. Dafis said the approach from the church wasn’t working.
“I was being told I was impure and unclean and sick.” Dafis said. ” Those kinds of things. And when you’re a 12-13 year old boy and the authority figures you rely on and are inpsired by telling you these things and those people and those places that are supposed to be your home and your shelter and your safe space are against you, you start rebelling.”
It was then when a family member recommended taking Dafis for counseling.
“I had never heard of conversion therapy or reparative therapy. I had never heard the name.” Dafis said. “I didn’t like it. This person was a stranger to me.”
Dafis said that his father began driving him to these appointments once a week and it was all “very hush-hush.”
“I started going to this guy and he gained my trust first because that is what all therapists do,” Dafis said.
Dafis said in discussing images and constructs of masculinity, he was told he was not as effeminate as other guys so the therapist believe he could learn to be straight or to act straight. And Dafis said that at the time he wanted to do it.
“I wanted to be cured because that is what everyone was telling me,” Dafis said, noting he had no positive gay role models to look towards.
At the time of his therapy, in the early 1980s, Dafis said was the height of the AIDS hysteria and that there were no depictions of homosexuality in the mainstream media that were not deviant. So Dafis attempted to make strides with the therapy.
The therapy included being subjected to violent pornographic imagery. He was shown people dying from AIDS, images of anal cancer with no context. His therapist made him scream in anger and cry so that he could “reach a breakthrough.”
These reparative behavior exercises were reinforced at home, Dafis said his father forced him to “walk a straight line” from the living room to the dining room and any slight “unmanly” swish of the hips was met with a strike of the rolling pin.
He was also put through electroshock treatments.
“By the time I reached early adulthood, I was beaten – literally electroshocked – into ‘submission,'” Dafis said.
“I was becoming a little resentful and I started to be comabtitive. I didn’t want to go anymore. At times they would drop me off I didn’t go in,” Dafis said.
Back To Greece
Dafis said his family decided that America, and Western Civilization was a contributing factor in his struggles so they decided the family needed to move back to Greece.
“So we moved back to the old country and I did my high school education there,” Dafis said.
While in Greece, Dafis said he employed everything he learned in therapy in order to pass for straight. He dated girls like his classmates, went to the prom with a girl and never got involved in what he described as an underground gay scene in Athens.
“I’m a teenager and I know I am lying,” Dafis said. “I did the best that I could to pass.”
After high school, Dafis needed to wait a year to begin school at the University of Athens and his father wanted him to enroll in the military for his compulsory service.
Dafis had other plans.
“I said hell no and left,” he said.
Dafis moved back to America where his mother’s family still lived and his parents and brother came with him. He enrolled in Temple University and his parents opened a Greek Diner.
“It Was Almost As If I Wanted To Die”
Dafis said while at school he spent time working at his parent’s diner to make money. He also stopped therapy, because it was causing him too much anxiety.
“When I was at University when I started to learn who I was and have relations with men,” Dafis said. “I felt I had to engage in a lot of reckless behavior and terms of drinking and partying and having different partners. It was almost as if I wanted to die. And looking back it is amazing I didn’t.”
After college Dafis went to law school and became began his career as a legal aid attorney in Virginia where he provided counsel to the underrepresented. He also met and married a woman he referred to as his soul mate.
Eventually, Dafis moved to New York and began working on Wall Street on financial fraud cases.
“I have a wife, I work on Wall Street and life is good,” Dafis said. “But I am a phony and everyone around me knew it too.”
Dafis said most gay men were not coming out on Wall Street and were living a double life. During that time Dafis said he worked hard at playing straight. That meant scrutinizing things he did like every memo he wrote.
“Did I use too many adjectives? Was it too flowery?” Dafis said.
But it all changed on September 11, 2001.
“I was witnessing colleagues jumping to their deaths right in front of me that I realized what I had lost all those years and what I had to do to become healthy, to reclaim and reassert my true self, and to serve others so that they never suffer like me,” Dafis said.
Dafis divorced his wife and began what he described as “real therapy.”
“I told her I am gay and just because we love each other and because we have sex doesn’t mean I am not gay,” he said.
New Start
Dafis said that he threw himself into his advocacy work and he shared his story and his truth through speaking engagements to try to raise awareness on the issue.
“LGBTQ Conversion Therapy is not ‘therapy’ whether practiced in a medical office or at a bible camp by ‘counselors,’ it’s child abuse,” Dafis said. “While the medical community has since outlawed the practice and 16 states, Washington D.C., have explicitly banned it, youth are still being abused by it.”
Dafis said speaking out did take its toll, and he stepped back from sharing his story as he said retelling forced him to relive it. But seeing the struggles of current youth have prompted him to open up again.
“It’s estimated that over 700,000 LGBTQ Americans have been subjected to it,” Dafis said. “Many of those are no longer with us as there is a direct correlation to suicide. Especially for trans youth.”
Dafis said that this sort of reparative behavior modification are easy avenues for parents who are hurting, who are worried and very trusting and are looking for an answer. Because those currently at-risk aren’t going to come forward to share their stories, Dafis said he had to.
“You are not going to get a trans youth of color to get them to tell this narrative so that parents are aware of how harmful this can be even if it sounds promising,” Dafis said.
As for his current life, Dafis moved to Maplewood in 2015 with his partner, George.
“After several terrible, tumultuous relationships I met George when we were both ready to be in a healthy, committed long-term relationship,” Dafis said. “George and I met, we had a lot of mutual friends and we were both politically engaged.”
Dafis arrived in Maplewood and immediately got involved, noting he was inspired by the civic engagement he saw in the community. He soon ran a successful campaign for Township Committee, which led to a touchstone moment in his life.
“When I took the oath of office and I stood there next to George and we kissed each other on the mouth and the whole room applauded I think that for both me and my parents it was a turning point,” he said.
And Dafis said he understands why his parents did what they did.
“They did what they knew. They did what they did out of love. They were afraid,” he said. “Imagine you’re a young mom and a young father and you move here and someone tells you your son is gay. You are going to make choices because you are fearful.”
Dafis said the key to solving this issue, beyond banning the practice of conversion therapy, is to be open and educate.
“My parents would have done better if they knew more,” Dafis said.
Despite the trauma and the pain and the struggle he went through, Dafis said his relationship with his parents is a strong one.
The best parts of who I am today – my empathy, service to others, collaborative and optimistic nature, and my relentless commitment to getting to yes in my life and work – I owe all to my parents,” Dafis said. “They’re loving good people who did the best they could.”
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