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A 16-year-old boy from Russia has been released from a drug rehabilitation clinic against being held against his will for being gay.

Ivan Kharchenko spent 12 days in the institution after being forcibly admitted by his traditionalist father, who hoped that the clinic would force him into changing his mind about being gay.

“I’d rather have you disabled or a vegetable than gay,” the boy’s father was cited as saying to a local radio station.

Although the formal reason for his incarceration was alleged drug and alcohol abuse, his lawyer Violetta Volkova told Ekho Moskvy radio that there was no evidence of such behaviour. She said that he was so drugged by the facility that he forgot the names of his own friends.

The activists who freed him led by insist that his placement in the centre without his consent amounted to kidnapping. Having lived with his father for the past three years, he is now in the care of his mother who is reported to have no objections to him being gay. Police will now investigate how he became to be hospitalised.

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