Stacey opened up the footage sent to her from the bank.
The time clock showed that the staff member opened the doors at bang on 9.30a.m. An elderly lady was first in the door using a walking frame.
Gabe Denton appeared right behind. He waited patiently while the woman progressed towards the open cashier’s window, then waited patiently at the top of the line for his turn as more customers filed in behind him. Unlike others who started to look at their watches or shifted from foot to foot, Gabe just stood and waited. His body language was relaxed and open. He wasn’t avoiding looking at the camera; nor did he appear to be in any hurry.
For some reason she’d expected him to be wearing a suit but he was dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt.
She continued watching as he waited his turn and then approached the counter. He rested his elbows on the ledge while answering questions from the teller. Her own mother had complained just last week about having to jump through hoops to get her own money and she hadn’t been withdrawing anywhere near that amount.
A second staff member approached to do the double-check and still Gabe appeared relaxed as he answered the second round of questioning.
The second staff member disappeared with a set of keys and reappeared a minute later with the cash, which she handed to the teller.
The teller counted it and pushed it through the chute.
Gabe took the envelope and left the bank.
Stacey watched the footage again and began to shake her head. Either the man had no shame or he really felt as though he was doing nothing wrong.
The ringing of her phone startled her from her thoughts.
‘Yeah, boss.’
‘What do you know about Exodus?’
‘It’s the second book in the Bible,’ Stacey answered.
‘Exodus Plus as an organisation.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Get on it. It’s an ex-gay movement, and I need an appointment with someone high up at the Wolverhampton branch.’
‘On it, boss,’ Stacey said, ending the call.
She closed the footage of Gabriel Denton and typed in a search of Exodus Plus in Wolverhampton.
‘Oh, okay,’ Stacey said aloud as Google gave her a brief description of the organisation.
Like the boss had said, Exodus was an ex-gay movement that encouraged people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and develop heterosexual desires and to enter straight marriages. The group was formed in America in the mid-seventies. At its height, the organisation had more than four hundred ministries around the world.
If it wasn’t so despicable, Stacey would have laughed out loud at the fact that one of its founding members, and a leader within the ministry of Exodus, had left the group, divorced his wife and set up home together with another male member. Alan Chambers, the president of the organisation, closed it down in 2013 and then told anyone who would listen that conversion therapy didn’t work. Despite his actions, many of its member ministries continued operating by either forming new networks or joining existing ones such as Exodus Global Alliance.
She clicked on any article with the Exodus name attached and was soon learning of cases of minors being forced to go to ex-gay camps against their will.
Stacey was growing more and more disturbed with each article she read. She had wrestled with her own sexuality in her teens and for the most part had battled alone. The confusion had been overwhelming when her first crush had been on a girl in the year above her. The object of her affections had moved house and therefore school, and once her fourteen-year-old heart had mended, she developed a crush on a boy that worked in the newsagents at the end of her road. It had taken another two years and many sleepless nights for her to understand that she was bisexual. A concept she’d had to explain to her mum when she plucked up the courage to tell her the truth. After her initial shock, Stacey’s mum had finally spoken.
‘Fifty-fifty not so bad,’ she said, shrugging.
‘Fifty-fifty what?’ Stacey had asked.
‘That I get grandchild,’ she said before giving Stacey a big hug.
Stacey had opened her mouth to explain that same-sex couples were no longer forced to remain childless. One step at a time, she’d decided.
Stacey reflected on those years of confusion and loneliness. She had felt many things, a bag of adolescent emotions, but she’d never wanted to remove that part of herself or even pretend it didn’t exist. She felt a deep sorrow for people who couldn’t accept themselves the way they were.
She continued reading until she hit on one piece which hinted that Exodus had links to a facility called the Judge Rotenburg Centre in Canton, Massachusetts.