Carina Vance Mafla is battling to have the clinics shut down. A government investigation has revealed rape and torture are being used in secret, unregulated gay conversion clinics in Ecuador. The government has reported the “therapies” range from electric shock treatment to submersion in ice-cold water. It says lesbian patients are also raped, 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,” says Ecuador’s Health Minister Carina Vance Mafla, who is openly lesbian. She is fighting to have the clinics shut down, and more than 500 Ecuadorian people have already been rescued from the clinics this year. One of those who has shared their story is 22-year-old Zulema Constante, whose own family had her kidnapped by a conversion clinic. She was tortured in a facility in a remote area ten hours from her home. “They told me I was bad, I was hurting my family, I was being manipulated by my girlfriend, that God made woman for men.” She was forced to clean toilets with her own hands, to eat food infested with maggots, and had a daily routine made up of prayers, exercise, and menial tasks, which anyone who refused was beaten. Constante managed to escape when her parents organised for her to come home in a taxi to prove its claim she was not at a clinic, after her girlfriend publicised her disappearance. She fled the taxi and found a police officer.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 25th November 2013 - 9:20am