QUITO, Ecuador – Fundacion Causana, an influential Ecuadorian LGBT human-rights organization and a coalition of other LGBT groups are calling on Ecuador’s minister of health to immediately close 200 so-called “ex- gay clinics” that still remain open. The organization also wants the government to investigate reported accounts of torture and abuse.
Sources claim that Ecuador is home to more than 200 “clinics” that allegedly starve, abuse and torture patients in an effort to make them heterosexual.
Although more than 30 “ex-gay clinics” have been closed this year, hundreds remain open and claim to “cure” homosexuality. While such places and their methods are said to have decreased in popularity in recent years, they 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, where she says for three months she was shackled in handcuffs while guards threw water and urine on her. She describes numerous accounts of physical and sexual abuse.
“The closure of the first clinics by the government is good, but not good enough,” Ziritti told Fundacian Causana. “Why is the clinic where I suffered still open?”
