My Thoughts on "Saving Alex"

I first heard about Alex Cooper's amazing story when her movie, Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story premiered on Lifetime back in late September.  When I heard she wrote a book, I knew I had to get my hands on it.  If that means I jumped on the bandwagon, then that's fine with me.  Alex's story is absolutely amazing and inspiring, and I wanted to get as much out of it as I possibly could.

           

As the subtitle of the book implies, Alex came out as gay to her conservative Mormon parents when she was 15 years old.  This immediately caused Alex's parents to jump into action.  As Mormons, they felt that Alex's lifestyle choice was an abomination and a choice she made.  Shortly after coming out to her parents, Alex's parents signed custody over to a couple in Utah (she lived in California), and sent their daughter to live with Talia and Johnny Siales.  The Sialeses lived down the street from Alex's maternal grandparents and were a part of their church.  Other than that, Alex's parents had no idea who they were, and they had never met her before dropping their daughter off at their house.  This is where Alex's nightmare began.

Photo of Alex Cooper courtesy of her Twitter account

The bulk of Alex's book focuses on her struggles and abuses at the hands of Talia and Johnny, who ran an illegal  "group home" out of their house.  This included physically beating Alex when she tried to escape or ask for help, psychological torture by telling her that she was causing her family extreme distress by choosing to be gay and by telling her that everyone in the town loved and trusted them, so she had no one to to turn to for help.  This last one in particular caused extreme problems for Alex, who learned quickly how to judge someone based on their appearance for just a few seconds and determine if they were Mormon or not (in her mind, anyone who was Mormon would not be of any help to her).  When Alex refused to give up the name of her girlfriend (who was 18, while she was 15), Talia and Johnny made her wear a backpack full of rocks all day long while she did chores around the house.  This did not break her spirit however, so they eventually forced her to stand facing a wall in their foyer from the time she got up until the time she went to bed, she even took her meals standing there.

Saving Alex book cover courtesy of HarperCollins' website.

This was one of the moments that bothered me the most, not because it happened, but because other people allowed it to happen.  Johnny and Talia were pillars of their community, so they have people in and out of their house all the time: church friends, community leaders, missionaries passing through, and not one person said anything about this obvious abuse happening to a child.  They simply accepted that what they were doing was right for Alex without question, despite the fact that they had to know that it was wrong.  It's a cross between blind devotion and the bystander effect.  You have people so devoted to their religion that they're willing to turn a blind eye to something that is obviously wrong, along with the mentality that someone else will speak up about it, and they don't have to be the ones to make waves.

Eventually Alex escapes this horrible abuse through the help of a friend at school and teacher who takes her under her wing, but that's just the beginning of her battle.  Now, she has to take her parents and Johnny and Talia to court to fight for her own future.  She even goes so far as to tell her mom that she'd rather be in foster care than go back to another conversion therapy center.  Now, it's important to note here that Alex wants to go back home with her parents, she doesn't blame them for the abuse she suffered, but she refuses to go back if they are going to send her either back to Johnny and Talia or to another conversion therapy center.  This is unacceptable for her parents.  Her parents' lawyer even argues that to do so would violate his clients' First Amendment rights.  Why, you might ask?  Well, the First Amendment includes freedom of religion, and since their religion says homosexuality is a sin, then they are following their religion by attempting to convert their daughter back to a heterosexual lifestyle.  I found this argument absolutely ludicrous and an insult to people of any religion anywhere who are fighting for their rights.  According to the Human Rights Campaign, conversion therapy has been discredited by every reputable mental health and mainstream medical organization as something that has never worked.  To date, only 16 states, DC and Puerto Rico have laws protecting LGBTQ+ children from conversion therapy, which is pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Something else that stood out to me is the fact that Alex made no distinction in her book between reputable group therapy/live in facilities and the illegal/extremist ones like the one she endured.  She simply stated statistics showing that these group settings can be extremely detrimental to teenagers, who have a significantly higher chance of attempting or successfully committing suicide.  Yes, there are extremely dangerous facilities out there, but there are also extremely helpful and useful ones.  The importance is doing your homework and knowing the difference.  One being run out of a couple's home so they can make enough money to make ends meet is probably the former.

Another thing that stood out to me was Alex's parents' refusal to acknowledge the obvious abuse and torture she endured at the hands of Johnny and Talia, particularly wearing the backpack full of rocks and standing at the wall all day (despite the fact that she had medical evidence proving her back and shoulders endured extreme duress, and one of her shoulders is higher than the other to this day).  At one point, Alex's dad point blanks asks her several years later if that was true.  She affirms that it was, and he says that he can't believe it.  Suddenly, her parents' denial made perfect sense to me.  They were not denying what happened because they did not believe their daughter and thought she was a liar, it was their minds protecting themselves.  If they openly acknowledged the fact that their daughter was horribly abused, they would also have to reconcile with the fact that they were the ones who sent her there in the first place.  Therefore, they were the ones responsible for the abuse and torture she suffered.  The mind has a way of protecting itself from harmful information (whether we want it to or not), and I really do think that this is one of those cases.

Overall, I found this book eye opening and heartbreaking.  Here's a girl who just wanted to just wanted to live her most authentic life, which was something her parents, unfortunately, struggled with at first.  Eventually, they did come around, and now Alex is able to be herself around her parents.  I would recommend the book to anyone struggling with coming to terms with who their loved ones might be and how they may want to live.  The movie is equally wonderful and should definitely be checked out next time you see it on Lifetime.