Therapy to change feminine boy created suicide
The family of a man who was involved in a 10-month experimental gender identity therapy program in the 1970s, in the process of which he was allegedly violently abused by his father, is blaming the therapy for their son’s distress and suicide in 2003. Both CNN host Anderson Cooper and the prominent gay rights blog Box Turtle Bulletin this week released detailed reports on the story of Kirk Murphy, the five-year-old subject of a government-funded study on gender identity disorder in the early 1970s. The purpose of the therapy was to discourage effeminate behavior in Kirk, who his family says grew up maladjusted and was found hanged in his room in 2003 at the age of 38. The family has not indicated that Kirk gave a reason for the suicide, but now claims that his therapy sessions at UCLA at the age of five should be blamed for his demise. Kirk’s mother Kaytee became aware of the possibility of therapy in 1970 through a television broadcast by gender identity expert Dr. Richard G