Guilty Of Murder: Two Men Who Ran Paramilitary Gay ‘Conversion’ Death Camp

Two men who ran a camp that promised to turn boys into men have been found guilty of a heinous murder of a 15-year old. 

In 2011, 15-year-old Raymond Buys was sent to South Africa’s Echo Wild Game Rangers camp, which claimed it would turn boys into men. It what was supposed to be a three-month training course. After two months, Buys was hospitalized, on life support, and nearly dead. 

“He was severely emaciated and dehydrated, had brain damage, a broken arm and bruises, and cigarette burns all over his body,” the Daily Telegraph reported in 2013. “He died two weeks later.”

“I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future,” Wilma Buys told The Daily Telegraph. “I trusted Alex de Koker with his life.”

Alex de Koker, who owned the camp, was 49 when he and his 20-year old employee, Michael Erasmus, were arrested and tried for murder, child abuse, neglect, and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

IOL News today reports the court was told 15-year old Buys had been “punched, struck with a spade, a stick, and a ‘piele wapper’ (60cm-long rubber pipe). He was forced to eat soap powder, pick up his own faeces with his mouth and was kicked and slapped while unconscious to ‘wake him up.'”

Today de Koker and Erasmus were found guilty of murder.

“Mrs Buys said her son had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and was struggling at school. The course had been recommended to her by a friend,” the Telegraph noted.

She said that her son started the course on January 12, 2011. Over the next two months, she said, she spoke to Mr Buys just three times – and was told by Mr de Koker that he was self-harming. 

“Raymond was only allowed to speak to me on speakerphone,” she said. “When I asked him why he was hurting himself, he told me ‘Mum, I’m not doing it to myself’.”

The camp had a reputation for being a place parents would send their male children if they were effeminate or perceived as gay. Some reports called it a “conversion camp.” Its owner, Alex de Koker, reportedly had ties to white supremacists.

Raymond Buys was not the first to die under de Koker’s watch. In 2007, 25-year old Erich Calitz died, of severe brain injuries, and 19-year-old Nicholas van der Walt also died, reportedly of a heart attack.

 

 

Image by Jacques Steenkamp via Twitter
Hat tip: Pink News