Woman who spoke out about gay conversion therapy found dead

ALANA CHEN

ASAM NEWS

Police say there’s nothing suspicious about the death of a 24-year-old woman who recently spoke out against gay conversion therapy.

Alana Chen was reported missing Saturday to the Louisville Police Department. The Denver Post reports authorities in Boulder County discovered her car in a parking lot of Gross Reservoir where they later found her body.

A cause of death has not been released, but Chen came out to a priest at Boulder’s St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church while in high school and underwent conversion therapy at Catholic Charities’ Sacred Heart Counseling. She discussed her mental health and struggles with self harm with the Denver Post just this past summer.

“I felt a lot of shame and anxiety,” Chen said. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was I going to hell? But I was still extremely faithful, and I felt like the church and the counseling was the thing that was saving me. The worse I got, the more I clung to it.”

Three years ago, after attempting suicide, she checked into a psychiatric hospital

“I think the church’s counsel is what led me to be hospitalized,” said Chen, “I was feeling so much shame that I was comforted by the thought of hurting myself. I’ve now basically completely lost my faith. I don’t know what I believe about God, but I think if there is a God, he doesn’t need me talking to him anymore.”

Carissa Chen, said her sister, Alana,  kept a journal. "One of the things she wrote was that she had a compelling story to tell," but, "No one will listen."

Chen's family now wants to help share her story to help other people grappling with mental health issues and their identity. They have launched a website to help provide support in Chen's memory: alanafaithchen.org

"Because no one else should have to feel that way, and no one else should have to take their life because they are scared," Carissa Chen said.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver said that they “reject any practices that are manipulative, coercive, or pseudoscientific.” However, a conference this year sponsored by the archdiocese had a ministry for people who want to “overcome homosexuality.

A Go Fund Me page set up to support Chen’s family's  website.