Clinics In Ecuador Use Torture To “Cure Homosexuality”

While some places in Latin America have made great strides in terms of promoting gay rights, such as legalizing same-sex marriage in Mexico City and Argentina, others remain far behind the curve.  According to an email being circulated by the site Change.org,  “ex-gay clinics” in Ecuador use methods akin to torture in attempts to cure people of their homosexuality.

According to the petition, one woman was kept in a clinic over 18 months in which:

“[D]octors” and guards shackled Paola for weeks on end, sexually assaulted her and threw urine and buckets of cold water on her.

As reported in the Advocate, females are particularly at risk to be checked into these clinics by their own parents:

These clinics have also imprisoned gay, bisexual, transgender, and cross-dressing people, to a lesser extent than lesbians, “probably because they get to leave the family earlier than girls,” said Velasquez. “The girls have all told the same thing: They are threatened with rape or raped, handcuffed, starved and forced to dress like prostitutes.”

To help the LGBT community in Ecuador avoid this type of mistreatment, Fundacion Causana, a women’s group from Quito, has started a petition urging the Ministry of Health to close all such clinics in the nation.  Find out more at Change.org.