Ecuadorians kidnapping and torturing LGBTQI+ at "clinics"

 

Back in 2013, the international press published the shocking torture and rapes that Ecuadorian LBGTQI+ people were being subjected to in, so called, “conversion clinics.” 

Pink News wrote:

Unregulated gay conversion therapy clinics found in Ecuador have been using both rape and torture as corrective measures against patients, a recent investigation has reported.

According to the Sunday Times, gay people and other “socially undesirable” patients are abused in the country’s secret clinics as a means of “spiritual correction.”

The government has reported “therapies” ranging from electric shock treatment to submersion in ice-cold water.

Lesbian patients are also raped, according to the government, and two people died in clinics last year.

“We’re talking about a mafia, a network that operates on a national level, violating human rights in every province,” said Carina Vance Mafla, Ecuador’s openly lesbian health minister.

They told the story of Zulmena Constante.

More than 500 Ecuadorian citizens have been recovered from the facilities since the start of 2013.

Among these citizens was 22-year-old Zulema Constante, a psychology student from Guayaquil whose own family arranged for her abduction after finding out she was gay.

The Sunday Times told of how she was grabbed from her father’s vehicle by two men after he had slammed on the breaks during a drive to lunch.

While she kicked and screamed during the kidnapping, they tore her clothes and manhandled her to a separate vehicle.

She said: “I’d told my family two months before that I was a lesbian and they’d been threatening me ever since.

“I was full of fear. I knew the principal ‘therapy’ at these clinics was rape.”

However, the clinic to which she was sent, which was 10 hours from her home in a remote region, instead focused on psychological torture methods.

She said: “They told me I was bad, I was hurting my family, I was being manipulated by my girlfriend, that God made woman for men.”

Ms Constante told of how she was forced to clean toilets with her own hands, and had to eat food infested with maggots.

Her daily routine included constant prayers, exercise, and a barrage of menial tasks.

Those who refused these tasks were beaten, she said. “I knew the same would happen to me if I didn’t comply.”

She added: “So I did everything they asked me, everything I could to survive, until I could escape or someone saved me.”

A change.org petition was created by Fundacion Causana to close the remaining torture clinics, explaining:

“Although over 30 “ex- gay clinics” have been closed this year, hundreds still remain open.  These clinics which claim to “cure” homosexuality have decreased in popularity in recent years yet still remain a horrific reality for many.  Escaping patients report cases of physical and psychological abuse including verbal threats, shackling, days without food, sexual abuse, and physical torture.  

Paula Ziritti, 24, spent two years in one such facility and for three months was shackled in handcuffs while guards threw water and urine on her.  She describes numerous accounts of physical and sexual abuse.  

Ziritti says, “The closure of the first clinics by the government is good, but not good enough. Why is the clinic where I suffered still open?”

Since Zirittu’s public disclosure, many others have been inspired to step forward and file formal complaints against these treatment centers.  Please join Fundacion Causana and a coalition of other Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender groups in calling on Ecuador’s Minister of Health to immediately investigate and close the 200 “ex- gay clinics” that still remain open despite public support for their closing and reported accounts of torture and abuse.”

Today, the petition is closed with a sealed “Victory Confirmed.”

But the kidnappings and torture have not stopped.

In 2023, journalist Diego Rivas published an article focusing on the experiences of two Trans women, Sury Samantha, 27 from the province of Santa Elena and Karlina Quiroz, 54 from Manabi. Sury spent five months in one of these clinics, turning up in women’s clothes until a few days in - she overheard the words:

“We are going to fix this faggot by hook or by crook, but he comes out of here cured or he doesn't come out,” 

 

They shaved off her long hair, tore her clothes, leaving her naked, took her out to the patio where they burned all of her feminine belongings, put her on her knees and forced her to scream “I am a man, I am a man!” 

 

The staff would urinate into a 3 litre cola bottle, let it sit in the sun and then make her drink it, saying that it would cure her of her “perversions.”

 

She later escaped the centre called “Saved for the Grace of God” and filed a formal complaint with the Prosecutor’s office for kidnapping, but was told that there were no lawyers to take her case.

 

Karlina was kidnapped on two occasions and taken to one of these places. The first time, in October 2019, a group of men forced her into a car, handcuffed her, mistreated her and took her to the centre, called “Liberty without Limits.” After three months there she tried to kill herself. On the second time, in July 2021, she made sure that she escaped within days.

 

Rivas explains:

 

“Since there is no specific law that prohibits and penalizes the existence of so-called “dehomosexualization clinics,” when they are closed, they can open in another location, in short periods of time and without receiving any sanction. This usually occurs in rural areas where controls on these establishments are even more limited and even non-existent.”

 

The National Assembly have been called to legislate against these conversion clinics, but those justified recommendations have been ignored, there is simply no political will.

 

So, it is deeply concerning that in the last eleven years, as far as the English-speaking International Press and the mainstream Ecuadorian press are concerned – the problem has been solved.