Desperate mother raped her gay son in bid to cure his homosexuality

India: A gay boy was raped by his own mother in a misguided attempt to cure him of homosexuality.

An Indian LBGT organisation has warned that parents are so desperate to have straight children they are encouraging cousins, brothers and even mothers to rape their children.

Gay sex is punishable with up to ten years in prison in India, meaning anxious families feel they have no choice but to carry out the "corrective rapes".

A homosexual girl who was in a relationship with another woman was also raped by her cousin in a bid to cure her.

A string of victims have sought help from the LGBT Collective in Telangana, which reported fifteen cases within the past five years.

But Vyjayanti Mogli who works in the southern Indian organisation's crisis intervention team said there were many more victims who were scared to speak out.

He told the Times of India: "We are sure there are many more cases, but they go unreported,

"We came across such cases not because they reported the rape, but because they sought help to flee their homes."

He said many victims wanted to block out memories of being attacked by a loved one so preferred to try and forget and cut off contact with their families rather than report it.

Shockingly, the parents are normally aware of the rape and have handpicked a family member, normally a cousin but also brother, father or mother, for the task.

Mr Mogli said in some communities in South India, marriages amongst cousins are common and parents decide which relation their daughter will be married to soon after her birth.

If this girl is discovered to be in a relationship with another girl, "elders in the family believe having sex with the 'would-be', even if it's forcibly, will cure her", he added.

The case of the teenage boy raped by his own mother was one of the many "shocking real life instances" from Bangalore that Hyderabadi filmmaker Deepthi Tadanki is dramatising in his upcoming film, Satyavati.

He said no one wanted to talk about corrective rape and his attempts he had tried reaching out to NGOs for information, only to be rebuffed.

He said: "Many rapes go unreported in India, and it will take years before something like corrective rape even gets talked about. That's why I wanted to tell this story."

In 2013 the Indian Supreme Court reinstated a colonial law which banned gay sex.