Aubrey Levin (born 18 December 1938) is a South African-born Canadian psychiatrist and former Colonel in the South African Defence Force who used abusive procedures on homosexual army conscripts and conscientious objectors in an attempt to cure them of suspected same-sex attraction in apartheid era South Africa.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Levin subjected many homosexual men and women to electroshock or chemical castration, and over 900 conscripts were forced to undergo involuntary sexual reassignment surgery.
In 1995 Levin moved to Canada and acquired a license to practice medicine. He became professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Calgary. In 2010 he was arrested for sexual assault of a patient; thirty men claimed they were assaulted by Levin during counseling. Levin was tried and convicted for assault, sentenced to five years in prison, and his medical license was suspended.
Early life
Levin was born on 18 December 1938 in Johannesburg, South Africa His father was the first Jewish member of the National Party; a party that promoted white Afrikaner nationalism and ruled as the leading governing party in South Africa until the end of apartheid.
Education
Levin completed high school in 1954 and began his medical studies at the University of Pretoria supported by a South African Defence Force (SADF) scholarship. In 1968, while he was completing his studies to earn his license as a psychiatrist, he submitted a letter to the Secretary of the South African Parliament in Cape Town, to request that he present his work using electric shocks as a treatment for "homosexuals and lesbians", before the Select Committee on the Immorality Amendment Act. Some of his colleagues called him Dr Shock. He qualified as a psychiatrist in 1969.
South African Defence Force
Because of his license as a psychiatrist, he was given the rank of Colonel when he joined the South African Defence Force (SADF). In 1971 he became Team Leader at SADF's Drug Rehabilitation Program at Ward 22 of 1 Military Hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte, near Pretoria.
The Aversion Project
It was at 1 Military Hospital, Voortrekkerhoogte, which is now known as Thaba Tshwane, that Levin developed combinations of electric shock and drug treatments for SADF conscripts that had been classified as "deviant." This included those who smoked marijuana or who were homosexual. Levin's work for the SADF, in which he used aversion therapy, became the subject of much scrutiny at the end of the apartheid era.
While working at Voortrekkerhoogte, Levin travelled to Greefswald, in an isolated region of northern South Africa, where he was the attending psychiatrist. The Greefswald military detention barracks had a "notorious reputation for the harsh treatment of conscripts," intended to cure conscripts of supposed vices and conscientious objections. Life in Greefswald has been described in detail by one of his former patients, Gordon Torr, in his 2014 novel, Kill Yourself and Count to 10.
In 2013, members of the Greefswald Facebook group followed Levin's 4-month long trial in Alberta, Canada and were overjoyed when he was found guilty. A Global New journalist interviewed some of the members who were then living in Australia, Denmark, among other countries. They still bear psychic scars from their Greefswald experiences, which some described as "torture". They said that they had called Greefswald "The Vault". Levin, whom they called "Bubbles" for his weight, was known for his "brutal authority to the young men." Many of them were only teenagers when they were traumatized at Greefswald and the "focus of their anger was Aubrey Levin."
From 1975 to 1981, Levin also worked at Addington Hospital in Durban and at Fort England Psychiatric Hospital in Grahamstown; now called Makhanda, Eastern Cape. He performed chemical castrations at the hospitals.
A 2014 Salon article said that up to 900 people, who had been involuntarily drafted into the South African army, many of them aged 16 to 24 years old, were "subjected to forced sexual reassignment surgeries" (SRS). Following these forced, invasive, and often incomplete SRS, for example, by removing male organs, those forced to go through the SRS, who could not afford the "expensive hormones" intended to "maintain their new sexual identities", were left without any further assistance. From 1971 to 1989, people characterized as homosexual were "submitted to chemical castrations and electric shock treatment" as an alleged cure for homosexuality.