News Slant	News Slant Archive

Attorneys for 61-year-old Dr. Aubrey Levin are suing the South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, and "Q" for publishing stories about his alleged human rights violations against lesbians and gays during the apartheid era.

Dr. Levin's attorneys are insisting that the stories were "false, unbalanced and quite horrific."

But Martin Nel, editor of "Q", maintains that all the stories published in "Q" are well-researched, checked, and double-checked before being published. "What concerns me is that Levin has managed to silence the North American press on the issue with threats of lawsuits," Nel said.

View our poll archive

It all started at the end of July this year when the Mail & Guardian published a story about Dr. Aubrey Levin, who was psychiatrist at Pretoria's Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital during the apartheid era. The paper claimed that Levin had been allegedly in charge of "aversion therapy" treatment for suspected homosexuals-- consisting of electric shocks and hormone drugs.

In the legal papers served to the Mail & Guardian, the attorneys for Dr. Levin, who is now a Canadian citizen, emphasized that he "has had a long and very distinguished career in South Africa and abroad.... [and] at no time was he ever in charge of any program, nor did he participate in any program to hunt, torture, chemically castrate, or sexually reassign gays and lesbians as alleged."

A recently published study, jointly commissioned in 1997 by the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), the Health and Human Rights Project and the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE), claims that-- during the apartheid years-- dozens of doctors and army chaplains were in charge of screening new recruits.

Those suspected of being gay or lesbian were quietly separated from their colleagues in uniform, according to the report, and strongly encouraged to participate in "aversion therapy" treatment to "cure" them of homosexual tendencies. The process was used in various military hospitals, mainly in the psychiatric wards.

When this story surfaced in the international press, more South Africans came forward with horrifying stories of their own.

"I still shudder when I think of how 30 years ago an apartheid doctor wanted to stop me from being gay by 'curing me' with electric shocks," says Kevin, a Johannesburg resident who was recruited into the South African army in 1970. Kevin claims that he was one of the many young homosexuals who underwent electric shock treatment. He has asked that his full name not be used.

"They strapped my arms and showed me a picture of a naked man with an erection... the first electric shock followed immediately.... I screamed, but then came the second, and the third shock."

Kevin was just 18 when army doctors told him that they would "cure" him of homosexual "deviancy" through a special kind of therapy. They did not mention electric shock therapy or anything similar.

Dr. Levin's attorneys, in a fax published on the "Q" website, insist that, "No patients treated by Dr. Levin ever received treatment against their will."

However, the South African newspaper quoted an intern psychologist, Trudie Grobler, who said that she had witnessed incidents of electric shock 'therapy' at a military hospital. She mentioned an occasion when a female conscript suspected of being a lesbian was given such severe shocks that "her shoes flew off her feet."

According to Grobler, the electric shock treatment was so traumatic that she could not believe how the patients could handle it. "I know that he [allegedly Levin] did aversion therapy with gay men-- I do not know of a case where it was successful," she added.

Grobler even wrote a letter of protest to the University of Pretoria and Army Command, but the only result was that the young intern was no longer allowed to enter the psychiatric ward, claims the South African paper.

The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE) has strongly condemned the alleged systematic abuse of lesbian and gay people and has called on the present army command to launch a "full-scale investigation into this matter."

"The Defense Force should apologize for the offenses and launch an investigation to gauge the extent of these offenses," said MRC representative, Simon Lewin.

Defense Ministry spokesperson, Sam Mkhwanazi, who recently admitted that a report on human rights atrocities against homosexuals had been handed over to his ministry in October of last year, told the South African media that, "The ministry is prepared to 'favorably' consider an investigation if the organizations formally request it."

The NCGLE recently stated that one of the victims was former serviceman Jean Erasmus who committed suicide last year. Before his death, Erasmus told former Amnesty International representative in Pretoria, Joanne Muller, about his ordeal. He said that, besides taking many hormone drugs, he was allegedly forced to take part in the gang-rape of Angolan women.

According to the NCGLE report, the doctors involved also decided to perform chemical sterilizations and sex-change operations on those conscripts who could not be 'cured' by "aversion therapy."

These operations allegedly started as early as 1971 and lasted up to 1989, one year before Nelson Mandela left prison and five years before South Africa finally became a democratic country.

A South African daily, "Beeld," claimed (on August 2) that there were years when an average of about 50 sex-change operations were performed, while some doctors admitted that an undisclosed number of patients died on the operating table.

According to the South African media, there were a number of cases where the sex-change operations were not completed because the project was scrapped and patients were left with both sets of sex organs.

Most apartheid doctors deny any knowledge of sex-change operations or merely admit that these experiments were conducted "solely on a volunteer basis."

"Dr. Levin has never recommended any gay patient for a sex change operation.... He is not even aware of any sex change operations which were performed on gays by the military," says his attorney's letter to the South African newspaper.

However, according to the South African media, some doctors-- who wish to remain anonymous-- admit that patients were pressured to sign up for the operation. They were threatened with jail on the one hand, and, on the other hand, promised a new identity and a regular supply of hormone drugs if they agreed to the procedure.

Claiming that, "Vicious attacks on Dr. Levin... have no regard to the truth as it relates to Dr. Levin," in a letter to the Mail & Guardian and "Q", his lawyers stated that Dr. Levin and his family "have experienced trauma and embarrassment from a personal and professional viewpoint."

It seems that Levin's fight to prove his innocence or merely to "silence the press," as Nel put it, is going to be resolved in court.