A new lawsuit against the Bartow County Sheriff’s Department alleges that officers disregarded a court order to have a lesbian woman placed in drug treatment and instead used county funds to have her placed in the care of a private Evangelical couple who proceeded to administer “ex-gay conversion therapy” against her will.

Having become worried about her daughter’s behavior, Amanda Booker’s mother requested what’s known as a “10-13” to have her daughter placed in psychiatric care for treatment. A judge signed off on it and sent out peace officers to escort Amanda to Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital. Along the way, Amanda began to have seizures and was taken instead to Cartersville Medical Center. It was there that she met Lt. Mark Mayton, the commander of the Bartow County Sheriff’s Drug Task Force who allegedly began to “(harass) Ms. Booker, making numerous threats concerning her lesbian relationship with her partner.”

“Lt. Mayton then forbade Ms. Booker from having a lesbian relationship and ordered Ms. Booker not to contact her partner,” the suit alleges.

The suit continues on saying that night after being released from the Cartersville hospital, Amanda was placed in a police car that was presumably to take her to the Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital. Instead the car took her to a shopping center parking lot where she was transferred from the cop car and into Lt. Mayton’s personal vehicle.

Booker claims Mayton drove Booker to the homes of two different evangelical couples whom he paid upwards of $1,000 of county funds to administer “conversion therapy” to Amanda. After a few weeks, Amanda “escaped” and fled back to her mother’s house where she was eventually confronted once more by Lt. Mayton.

According to the suit, Booker was tackled to the ground with such sudden force that she urinated on herself. She was thrown up against her partner’s vehicle; her bare breast exposed and was then corralled into the back of an unairconditioned cop car. Panicked, Booker began to kick at the door in an attempt to escape for which she was subsequently charged with damaging a government vehicle (among other things).

En route to the Bartow County Jail, Booker once again began to suffer from physical ailments and was once more taken to the Cartersville Hospital. Her phone was then smashed by Lt. Mayton so that she could not contact her partner. There a blood test was administered without her consent and she was subsequently taken into custody at the Bartow County Jail. She never made it to the Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital.

A lawyer for Amanda Booker states that “At all times relevant to this action, it was normal procedure, practice and custom of defendants Bartow County …  to punish homosexuals and persons holding different religious beliefs.”

Booker’s lawyer claims that she suffered “extreme fear, humiliation, shock, anxiety, worry and upset.” She is seeking an unspecified amount for her troubles and harassment.

(Source: GA Voice)