“Gay cure” camp rangers found guilty of murder
15-year-old Raymond Buys, shortly before he died
Two men behind a brutal South African masculinising and gay cure youth camp have been found guilty of murdering a 15-year-old boy.
Emaciated and dehydrated, teenager Raymond Buys died in hospital in 2011 with brain damage, a broken arm, bruises and cigarette burns on his body.
On Friday, the Vereeniging Regional Court found Alex de Koker and his former employee Michael Erasmus guilty of not only murder, but also child abuse and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
Their Echo Wild Game Rangers Camp, in which two other boys had previously died, promised parents to “turn boys” and “moffies” into “men”.
According to testimony previously heard in court, Buys was forced to do manual labour and was beaten with planks, pipes, sticks, a shovel and a hose when he didn’t do his work correctly.
He was also forced to eat his own faeces and washing powder, was chained to his bed, tasered and was not allowed to go to the toilet. By the time the abused teen was eventually taken to hospital it was too late for doctors to save him.
De Koker, who owned the camp, had insisted that all of Buys’ injuries were self-inflicted or caused by fights with another boy at the camp.
Sapa reported that Magistrate Retha Willemse described De Koker as “a pathetic witness,” and found that it was “absurd” for him to have claimed that he was not aware of the boy’s injuries.
Willemse also said that Erasmus was a willing participant in the abuse and was not just following orders.
Buys’ mother has said that she had sent him to the three month camp, which cost R22,000, to make him “a better man”.
The South African Society of Psychiatrists “opposes any psychiatric treatment such as ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy designed to change a person’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.” It has also warned that this kind of therapy “runs the risk of harming patients by causing depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviour”.
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My thoughts are with everyone who had to suffer because of reparative therapy. If we become aware of any such ‘camps’ or practices, then we must report and expose it immediately
Pity that his mother was not charged as well and found guilty alongside these two idiots!
Wait, and the mother wasn’t charged?! She sent her son there. She killed him. She had blood on her hands. Sies.
*HAS (not had) blood on her hands
While I do not condone this type of camp this is dishonest reporting. This camp WAS NOT to supposedly rehabilitate homosexuals. The term “moffie” was used to describe someone that is weak in discipline.
It’s a fucking travesty that the mother doesn’t get so much as a slap on the wrist for sending her son to a death camp. What an utterly vile human being.
So the owners of the camp is on trial for murder and the MOTHER is sitting on the side lines. She is the one that sent and paid for her son to be a BETTER man.
She is guilty of murder too, if not physical but the mental murder of a confused young boy. Instead of trying to help him she paid 22k to a stranger to make her son BETTER and now she has lost her son and a lot of money, my sympathy lies with the young man and not with her.
If there is any justice in this world she would be on trial for abandonment and mental torture.