- The Provincial Court of Madrid confirms the transfer to the abbreviated procedure of the supposed “identity coach” after flatly rejecting her appeal for archiving.
- The Madrid Prosecutor’s Office and the Spanish Association Against Conversion Therapies promote the cause of pathologizing homosexuality on the internet.
- The accused alleges that her controversial statements were “misinterpreted” while justice determines that the final resolution should be issued in a trial.
The judicial fight against pseudotherapies in Spain has reached a historic milestone after confirming that an alleged hate crime conversion therapies will be tried in the capital. The Provincial Court of Madrid has definitively endorsed the prosecution of the alleged therapist Elena Lorenzo Rego. The Madrid court has dismissed the defense appeals, unanimously understanding that the articles, promotional texts and videos published by the defendant on her website present clear signs of criminality, addressing homosexual orientation as a reversible medical pathology.
The origin of the criminal complaint in the courts of Madrid
The opening of this criminal case dates back to 2023, when the Spanish Association Against Conversion Therapies presented a formal complaint to the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office. The human rights group detected that Lorenzo systematically offered specific “identity coaching” courses in digital environments. These contents promised users to “recover heterosexuality” and definitively overcome the so-called “Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, a non-existent clinical concept lacking scientific endorsement by psychiatry organizations.
The Public Ministry assumed the investigation after verifying that the accused had been offering these services for more than a decade aimed at men and women who experienced attraction towards people of the same sex. Although the initial complaint from the civil association covered suspicions of alleged professional intrusion, advertising crime and illicit association, the Prosecutor’s Office and the investigating courts decided to concentrate the formal accusation on the typicality of the hate crime due to the degrading nature of the publications analyzed.
The Provincial Court rejects the defense arguments
The recent ruling by the magistrates of the Provincial Court of Madrid overturns the legal strategy of the accused, who sought to immediately archive the proceedings. Lorenzo Rego argued in his appeal that the expressions contained on his website and in his promotional videos had been taken out of context or misinterpreted by the complaining organizations. The judges have been categorical in pointing out that decreeing a dismissal in this procedural phase would be completely premature and would violate the proper development of the administration of justice.
The court specifies in its order that determining whether or not the texts on the website constitute a provocation to hatred or public humiliation towards homosexual people is a strictly evaluative task. Therefore, this assessment must be formally resolved during the oral hearing in the dock and not through prior resolutions. For its part, the legal representation of the defendant has limited itself to reminding that the current decision does not resolve the substance of the litigation and that three of the initial crimes remain ruled out.
A history of administrative impunity that ends in criminal proceedings
The name of Elena Lorenzo Rego came to light for the first time in 2016, when the Madrid associative fabric activated the alarms before the Department of Social Policies of the Community of Madrid. The regional executive then initiated a sanctioning file covered by the local laws for protection against LGTBIphobia, finally ruling on an administrative fine of 20,000 euros for the promotion of sexual orientation reconversion therapies.
However, that financial sanction ended up being annulled in the ordinary contentious-administrative courts due to formal defects committed during the processing of the institutional procedure. The initial administrative impunity has now been neutralized by criminal proceedings, which are advancing steadily three years after the opening of the first proceedings and after having taken a statement from the accused as an investigator. With this trial, the Spanish judicial system is preparing to set a key precedent in the criminal punishment of those who profit by promoting the repression of emotional diversity.
