About This Episode
"Skulle kureres for homoseksualitet: Sune kom i kristen omvendelsesterapi" ("He was to be cured of homosexuality: Sune entered Christian conversion therapy") is episode 220 of the Danish podcast "Sagen Genåbnet" (The Case Reopened), hosted by Jesper Vestergaard Larsen and Sanne Fahnøe. It tells the story of Sune Gylling Æbelø and the Christian conversion therapy he underwent as a young man.
The story begins in 1993, when Sune, then a young Christian, attended a Christian gathering in Grenå in Denmark. There he met the head of an efterskole — a Danish boarding school for teenagers — affiliated with Indre Mission, the Inner Mission movement within the Danish Lutheran church. The man told him: "God can heal you."
That encounter became the starting point for Sune's entry into Christian conversion therapy, undertaken in the hope of "being cured" and of overcoming what the preacher called his homosexuality.
The episode places Sune's account in a current political context. The Danish government now wants to make it illegal to subject anyone under the age of 18 to this form of therapy. In connecting one man's personal experience with proposed legislation intended to protect minors from similar treatment in the future, the episode moves between individual testimony and a wider debate about where the limits of religious practice should lie.
"Sagen Genåbnet" is a Danish true crime podcast that digs into unsolved killings and reopens old cases with the help of modern investigative techniques. Its usual subject matter is unsolved murder cases, criminal investigations and DNA forensics. This episode departs from that format, setting aside crime to give an account of Sune's experience of Christian conversion therapy instead.
The episode runs for 40 minutes and is the 220th in the series. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and several other platforms.
