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Milton Hershey school was accused of forcing boys to watch conversion therapy videos (YouTube/Milton Hershey School)
A student who claimed an elite school forced him to undergo conversion therapy after he was caught watching gay porn has been ordered to pay $800 of the school’s legal fees.
Former student Adam Dobson claimed he was forced to watch an hour-long “conversion therapy” video of the anti-LGBT+ pastor Sy Rogers, the leader of the “gay cure” movement, as punishment for downloading gay porn as a high school freshman at Milton Hershey boys’ boarding school.
Milton Hersheys school is the richest private school in the United States, with about $13.8 billion in assets, IRS records show.
He said this was followed by a campaign of prayer sessions and other efforts to get him to change his sexual orientation.
In May, federal judge John E. Jones III dismissed his lawsuit against the school and questioned whether Dobson’s treatment constituted conversion therapy.
“Plaintiff’s subjective accusation that Defendants engaged in ‘gay conversion therapy’ does not make it so,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
Adam Dobson was ordered to pay $800 towards his former school’s legal fees after he claimed he underwent conversion therapy at the institution.
Now, Dobson has been ordered to pay $800 to the school to cover some of its legal fees in defending the case, according to PennLive.
The order was filed in the US Middle District Court on Wednesday (7 October). The former student could have been ordered to pay as much as $20,000 of the school’s legal fees. Dobson can contest the fee if he wishes to do so.
In his original lawsuit, Dobson accused his house parents, Andrew and Deanna Slamans, of engaging in “gay conversion therapy” when they showed him the video.
After Dobson’s case was made public, a second former student came forward and said that he too had been forced to watch the video.
The school admitted that boys at the boarding school had been shown the video, but disputed that it counted as conversion therapy.
In his May ruling, the judge ruled that the video was acceptable and said the prayer campaign did not constitute conversion therapy as the couple “never explicitly mentioned his sexual orientation during the prayers” and “never indicated in the prayers that they preferred that he be straight.”
In his junior year at the school, Dobson attempted suicide, and was later expelled in 2013.
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