your dad and everything is going to be be fine.' And I believed that.

Before a packed house of hundreds gathered to promote legislation banning conversion therapy, the 35-year-old fights back tears as he remembers the shame he felt that day nearly 20 years ago. He is in another library, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, searching for answers.

“The title of the book is, “Resolving Homosexual Problems: A Guide for LDS Men." I actually ended up reading every LDS authored book on that shelf,” Fuentes said.

Still in high school in Springville, near Provo, and desperate to not be gay, Fuentes sought guidance from a church bishop. The faith leader in turn arranged — without his parents’ knowledge — for the church to pay forHe says.

But not Fuentes. During a weekend-long retreat in Phoenix in 2011, he was instructed to act out scenarios with other participants with the purpose of healing a supposed divide with his father.

In one role-playing exercise, he wrote a letter to his “father”, who was played by an older man at the retreat. The man then cradled Fuentes in his arms while reading the letter back to him.

The acceptance and camaraderie he experienced at the retreat — in getting to know other men who had same-sex attraction and were struggling to understand it — seemed to help at first. But it didn’t last long.

Within a week Fuentes felt lower than ever. He went to see a spiritualist who told him that female entities had attached themselves to him