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Lifetime's 'Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story’ is based totally on a teen who was once despatched to conversion remedy — however is it a true story? Keep reading to determine.

*Content caution: This article offers with conversion remedy, which some readers might to find triggering.*

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It turns out that the movie is very much primarily based on the actual Alex Cooper's revel in and in large part on her memoir, Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began. 

Here's the whole thing you need to know about the Lifetime film and about Alex Cooper nowadays.

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Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story — is it based on a true story?

When Alex Cooper used to be a 15-year-old teen residing in Southern California, she first published to her Mormon oldsters that she was once in love with a girl. As the title of her memoir suggests, that is when her nightmare began.

Afraid that she can be doomed for eternity, Alex's spiritual parents sent her to Utah to a area the place Johnny and Tiara Sims used various tactics including physical abuse to check out and "make me straight," Alex recalls. 

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According to the Lifetime synopsis, Alex "faced horrible punishments and beatings that were intended to cure her homosexuality. After realizing she would have to submit to their rules in order to survive, Alex was eventually allowed to attend school, where she became friends with a boy who was the president of the gay-straight alliance."

Thanks to that comradeship, she was once in the long run able to get in touch with an legal professional who helped her escape and turn into the lesbian activism and anti-conversion treatment activist she is these days.

Where is Alex Cooper now?

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These days, consistent with her Twitter bio, Alex is "telling my story to end conversion therapy and stand up for LGBT teens." She says in an interview with Lifetime, she had an "extremely happy childhood and a really tight family" — that is, until the nightmare of conversion therapy began.

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As she recollects, her folks picked her up from a friend's space "with all of my things already packed in the car and we drove to Utah and pulled up to a strangers' house." A pair greeted them, and Alex's folks "signed over their parental rights" to this couple right then and there.

Over the course of the subsequent eight months, Alex was once pressured to undergo aversion treatment, which is composed of corporal punishment intended to deter homosexual feelings and thoughts. As any science-prone reader is aware of, conversion therapy on the whole is based on the false and discredited perception that homosexuality is an sickness that must be cured.

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"I was given a backpack," she says, "they filled it with rocks and they told me it was supposed to help me feel the physical burden of being gay." Alex was once pressured to wear this backpack for up to eighteen hours an afternoon. 

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As viewers will see on the film, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Alex was once additionally physically abused in different ways on a regimen basis, and in a move that some may in finding acquainted from the extra lighthearted But I'm a Cheerleader exploration into conversion remedy, was once additionally forced to be informed "how to take care of a household."

In maintaining with conventional feminine care-taking roles, she used to be made to deal with the Sims' circle of relatives's youngsters, "getting them reading for school, making them meals, and keeping the house clean."

With the help of a legal professional who took her out of this abusive treatment program, Alex was in a position to rebuild her courting along with her family and turn into the function fashion for LGBTQ teenagers far and wide that she is lately.

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"It's been eight years since I've been in conversion therapy but it's still something that I have to carry with me," Alex says. "Something that I think about when I go to the grocery story or something I think about when I'm putting a backpack on to go for a hike."

But now, she's in a position to reside her lifestyles like an out lesbian, and lives in Portland, Ore. together with her female friend.

What's extra, Alex now has used her horrific experience in conversion treatment to paintings for the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and plenty of different nonprofits focusing on LGBTQ+ problems.

Although she assists in keeping her Instagram private and does not replace her Twitter a lot, stay your ears peeled for her title. We be expecting she's doing essential work in order that future generations won't must undergo the identical conversion treatment techniques she used to be put thru.

Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story is now streaming on Lifetime.

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