'I was given electric shocks to knock the homosexuality out of my brain'
Image caption, Norman came forward following an earlier BBC investigation into electric shock therapyNorman Goodman, 75, said that from childhood he felt more like a girl than a boy, and told his parents that he wanted to be female. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Manchester when he was 18, in the late 1960s. He told the BBC doctors said they would try to make it easier for him, but he was given electric shocks.
- ▪Image caption, Norman came forward following an earlier BBC investigation into electric shock therapyNorman Goodman, 75, said that from childhood he felt more like a girl than a boy, and told his parents that he wanted to be female.
- ▪He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Manchester when he was 18, in the late 1960s.
- ▪He told the BBC doctors said they would try to make it easier for him, but he was given electric shocks.
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| Original publisher | BBC News — UK |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde034wn0l3o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss |
| Publication time | Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:19:28 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-17T05:28:41.702Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-17T05:28:41.702Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | Idbxd52fx3ap · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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'I was given electric shocks to knock the homosexuality out of my brain'Image caption, Norman Goodman underwent controversial electric shock therapyByHayley HassallBBC North West InvestigationsPublished9 minutes agoMore victims of controversial electric shock therapy used to try to change their sexuality have come forward to call on the government to investigate the historical "scandal".They spoke out after the BBC revealed that more than 260 people had been subjected to the discredited treatment at NHS hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s.The people, who are now in their 70s and 80s, said they had been left physically and emotionally traumatised by their experiences.And while the government said it would be drafting legislation to ban "aversion therapy", ten months on, the people spoken to…
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