LOUISVILLE — Joyce Calvo-Chen’s fingertips traced the outline of her daughter’s face in framed pictures arranged on the family’s kitchen table days after Christmas — photographic evidence that 24-year-old Alana Chen once danced, smiled and lived among us.
The mother and daughter talked to The Denver Post last summer, sharing Chen’s story of undergoing conversion therapy through the Catholic Church — something church officials deny — and Chen’s resulting mental health and self-harm struggles. Chen died by suicide in December, her body found in the Boulder County foothills.
Out of that tragedy, Chen’s family has started a foundation they hope will help others struggling with their mental health. But a grieving Calvo-Chen also believes the Catholic Church should be held accountable for her daughter’s death.
“They are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and when Jesus comes back, they are going to be the ones in trouble — not my daughter,” Calvo-Chen said. “Jesus Christ would be appalled by this kind of abuse.”
The Catholic Archdiocese of Denver and Father David Nix, the priest Chen came out to around 2009, both maintain the church didn’t subject Chen to conversion therapy, calling her death a tragedy.
“The issues that she dealt with were far more complicated than any one single issue, so to try to put everything down into one reason for why her life went a certain direction and try to hold one group responsible seems pretty irresponsible,” said Mark Haas, spokesman for Archdiocese of Denver.
Chen told The Post last summer that from the time she was a young teen through college, she was shamed and told she would go to hell by clergy and church counselors after coming out to Nix at Boulder’s St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center while she was in high school.
Nix, who remains a priest but is not assigned to any church, described homosexual acts as mortal sins in a post on his personal blog last August. “If you are committing homosexual sins and do not repent, confess them and try your best to stop, you will go to hell forever,” he wrote.
When interviewed last summer, Haas said it would be improper to comment on the specifics of Chen’s counseling. But, he added, “we reject any practices that are manipulative, coercive or pseudoscientific.”
Now, though, he’s more direct: “Never once was conversion therapy practiced. It was never discussed with her or suggested to her. It’s not something we do.”
“A young woman who was eager to serve God”
Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors went into effect in August. The ban, which prohibits state-licensed medical or mental health care providers from engaging in counseling with the goal of changing a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity, would not have protected Chen because the new law only applies to people under the age of 18 and does not include pastoral counseling.
Whether a minor or not, conversion therapy has negative impacts for those who endure it, including depression, anxiety and a fractured relationship with faith when the patient is religious, according to the American Psychological Association.
Father Peter Mussett, who served at St. Thomas Aquinas while Chen attended, Nix, and the Denver mission of the Sisters of Life nuns who said they “spiritually accompanied” Chen for more than a year all sent statements to The Post explaining their role in Chen’s life, mourning her passing and remembering her love of faith.
“For those of us who had an opportunity to know Alana, we will remember her as a young woman who was eager to serve God and others and had a tremendous love of the poor,” Mussett said. “She will be greatly missed.”
“She wanted to be saved”
Chen previously told The Post she started seeing Nix alone without her parents’ knowledge when she was 14. She said Nix told her not to tell her parents or anyone else that she was attracted to women because if she did, her family would accept her and she then wouldn’t have as much incentive to change.
“He told her it was a mortal sin, which means you can go to hell for that, and he was going to help her never live that life,” Calvo-Chen said. “She wanted to be saved from hell. She didn’t want to be gay because they said it was a sin and an abomination. They couldn’t accept her as she was.”
Emails from 2017 between Calvo-Chen and Auxiliary Bishop of Denver Jorge Rodríguez that Calvo-Chen provided to The Post show Rodríguez assuring Calvo-Chen that Nix would no longer counsel Chen without her mother’s knowledge.
“This situation has ended,” Rodríguez wrote. “After your email, I personally talked twice with Fr. David. He has assured to me that this will never happen again.”
In a statement to The Post, Nix said Chen’s mother would drive Chen to meetings with him, and that he met with the University of Colorado Boulder student until she was 20.
“In my 10 years of priesthood I have never told anyone that it is a sin to be attracted to anyone,” Nix wrote. “In my 10 years of being a priest, I have never done conversion therapy with anyone, and I have never suggested conversion therapy to anyone… Alana was one of the holiest people I have ever met, and her death is an incredible tragedy.”
About a week after Chen was found dead, Nix posted on his blog a 2014 letter Chen wrote defending the priest and speaking to his character. Nix said Chen defended his “good name even from the grave.”
In a 2018 letter, Archbishop of Denver Samuel Aquila wrote to the Catholic community addressing Nix’s “difficulties holding a parish assignment” after four failed placements, saying the priest could be described as “overzealous in his belief that many people are too casual in matters of liturgy and doctrine.”
But Haas confirmed Nix remains a priest in good standing and is pursuing life as a diocesan hermit, a non-parish assignment centered around prayer.
“She couldn’t stop it”
Chen, struggling with suicidal thoughts and self-harm, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2016 and began distancing herself from the church. She told The Post over the summer that the church’s counsel led to her hospitalization.
Calvo-Chen said after her daughter started embracing her sexual orientation, the clergy and Sisters of Life nuns who Chen considered her spiritual family cut off contact with her.
“She loved those people and loved her faith so much,” Calvo-Chen said. “She just wanted to be able to love herself and be accepted by them, not told she was disordered and defective. She didn’t have to lose all those people and their love and the faith and religion.”
Now Carissa Chen said she wants her sister to be remembered for her grace and charitable spirit. The family has started the Alana Faith Chen Foundation, which they intend to provide funding for mental health treatment not covered by insurance.
Calvo-Chen, who said she loves the true teachings of Jesus, wants her daughter to be remembered as a lover of nature who was devout in her faith and unwavering in her desire to help the poor and struggling.
“Alana was a writer. She would write so many beautiful things she was going to do,” Calvo-Chen said. “Other times, she made it through. This time, she couldn’t stop it. I just can’t accept that she’s not going to walk into our home.”
