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Thread: The Mennonite "Ghost" Rapes Of Bolivia

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    The Mennonite "Ghost" Rapes Of Bolivia



    All photos by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky. Noah Friedman-Rudovsky also contributed reporting to this article.

    For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town?s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep clothed, only to wake up naked and covered by dirty fingerprints all over her body. No way to understand how another could dream of a man forcing himself onto her in a field?and then wake up the next morning with grass in her hair.

    For Sara Guenter, the mystery was the rope. She would sometimes wake up in her bed with small pieces of it tied tightly to her wrists or ankles, the skin beneath an aching blue. Earlier this year, I visited Sara at her home, simple concrete painted to look like brick, in Manitoba Colony, Bolivia. Mennonites are similar to the Amish in their rejection of modernity and technology, and Manitoba Colony, like all ultraconservative Mennonite communities, is a collective attempt to retreat as far as possible from the nonbelieving world. A slight breeze of soy and sorghum came off the nearby fields as Sara told me how, in addition to the eerie rope, on those mornings after she?d been raped she would also wake to stained sheets, thunderous headaches, and paralyzing lethargy.

    Her two daughters, 17 and 18 years old, squatted silently along a wall behind her and shot me fierce blue-eyed stares. The evil had penetrated the household, Sara said. Five years ago, her daughters also began waking up with dirty sheets and complaints of pain "down below."
    The family tried locking the door; some nights, Sara did everything she could to keep herself awake. On a few occasions, a loyal Bolivian worker from the neighboring city of Santa Cruz would stay the night to stand guard. But inevitably, when their one-story home-set back and isolated from the dirt road-was not being watched, the rapes continued. (Manitobans aren?t connected to the power grid, so at night the community is submerged in total darkness.) ?It happened so many times, I lost count,? Sara said in her native Low German, the only language she speaks, like most women in the community.

    Mennonite children attend school in Manitoba Colony, Bolivia.

    In the beginning, the family had no idea that they weren?t the only ones being attacked, and so they kept it to themselves. Then Sara started telling her sisters. When rumors spread, ?no one believed her,? said Peter Fehr, Sara?s neighbor at the time of the incidents. ?We thought she was making it up to hide an affair.? The family?s pleas for help to the council of church ministers, the group of men who govern the 2,500-member colony, were fruitless?even as the tales multiplied. Throughout the community, people were waking to the same telltale morning signs: ripped pajamas, blood and semen on the bed, head-thumping stupor. Some women remembered brief moments of terror: for an instant they would wake to a man or men on top of them but couldn?t summon the strength to yell or fight back. Then, fade to black.

    Some called it ?wild female imagination.? Others said it was a plague from God. ?We only knew that something strange was happening in the night,? Abraham Wall Enns, Manitoba Colony?s civic leader at the time, said. ?But we didn?t know who was doing it, so how could we stop it??

    No one knew what to do, and so no one did anything at all. After a while, Sara just accepted those nights as a horrific fact of life. On the following mornings, her family would rise despite the head pain, strip the beds, and get on with their days.

    Then, one night in June 2009, two men were caught trying to enter a neighbor?s home. The two ratted out a few friends and, falling like a house of cards, a group of nine Manitoba men, ages 19 to 43, eventually confessed that they had been raping Colony families since 2005. To incapacitate their victims and any possible witnesses, the men used a spray created by a veterinarian from a neighboring Mennonite community that he had adapted from a chemical used to anesthetize cows. According to their initial confessions (which they later recanted), the rapists admitted to?sometimes in groups, sometimes alone?hiding outside bedroom windows at night, spraying the substance through the screens to drug entire families, and then crawling inside.

    But it wasn?t until their trial, which took place almost two years later, in 2011, that the full scope of their crimes came to light. The transcripts read like a horror movie script: Victims ranged in age from three to 65 (the youngest had a broken hymen, purportedly from finger penetration). The girls and women were married, single, residents, visitors, the mentally infirm. Though it?s never discussed and was not part of the legal case, residents privately told me that men and boys were raped, too.

    In August 2011, the veterinarian who?d supplied the anesthetic spray was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and the rapists were each sentenced to 25 years (five years shy of Bolivia?s maximum penalty). Officially, there were 130 victims?at least one person from more than half of all Manitoba Colony households. But not all those raped were included in the legal case, and it?s believed the true number of victims is much, much higher.

    Mennonite children playing soccer in ManitobaColony, Bolivia.

    In the wake of the crimes, women were not offered therapy or counseling. There was little attempt to dig deeper into the incidents beyond the confessions. And in the years since the men were nabbed, there has never been a colony-wide discussion about the events. Rather, a code of silence descended following the guilty verdict.

    ?That?s all behind us now,? Civic Leader Wall told me on my recent trip there. ?We?d rather forget than have it be at the forefront of our minds.? Aside from interactions with the occasional visiting journalist, no one talks about it anymore.

    But over the course of a nine-month investigation, including an 11-day stay in Manitoba, I discovered that the crimes are far from over. In addition to lingering psychological trauma, there?s evidence of widespread and ongoing sexual abuse, including rampant molestation and incest. There?s also evidence that?despite the fact that the initial perpetrators are in jail?the rapes by drugging continue to happen.

    The demons, it turns out, are still out there.
    Last edited by blighted star; 12-22-2013 at 04:58 PM.

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    http://www.beinglatino.us/comunidad/...the-aftermath/

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    IMG]http://www.beinglatino.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/2009-10-16_Bolivia-Mennonites-in-jail-300x186.jpg[/IMG]

    In the wake of the confessions, there was virtually no discussion in the community about what had occurred. Not only were the women and girls, who had fallen victim to the rapists, not offered any form of therapy within the community, the male elders rejected offers of aid by therapists from outside the community. Though the victims would have welcomed some form of counseling, or at least an outlet to release some of their emotional trauma, the male leaders in the community felt it would have been counter-productive. Bishop Johan Neurdorf, the community’s highest authority, asked, “Why would they need counseling if they weren’t even awake when it happened?” According to Abraham Wall Enns, Manitoba Colony’s civic leader, “That’s all behind us now. We’d rather forget than have it be at the forefront of our minds.”

    But according to the women and girls who were raped during this terrible time, it is always on the forefront of their minds. How could it not be? Not only were the women and girls denied therapy after the rapes had occurred, but they were not even permitted to be the plaintiffs in their own rape cases. Because women cannot legally represent themselves, the plaintiffs in the trial were five men, selected from among the fathers and husbands of the victims. While the women and girls are encouraged to move on from what happened to them, they are also encouraged, or even expected, to forgive the rapists and perhaps welcome them back into the community one day, if they properly ask for forgiveness. The women of the community, faithful to their core, claim that they have forgiven their rapists, because it is what God expects of them.

    Perhaps most disturbing is that the rapes have not stopped. Nine men confessed, subsequently recanted, and were later found guilty of drugging entire families and raping the women and girls. (Though men and boys also, allegedly, fell victim, they were not listed as victims in the court case.) But the crimes continued after the original rapists were incarcerated. Are they being committed by copycat criminals? Did some of the original rapists never get caught? One Manitoba man said, “It’s definitely not as frequent. The rapists are being much more careful than before, but it still goes on.” With no police force, and street lamps and cameras not permitted because they are considered technology, the Mennonites must hope to, once again, catch someone in the act in order to stop these crimes.

    With their strong faith in God, but without any concrete plan for healing, the Mennonite community of Manitoba Colony has fared as well as can be expected. All they hope to do now is wait.

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14688458




    26 August 2011 Last updated at 20:44 GMT


    A court in Bolivia has sentenced seven members of a reclusive conservative Christian group to 25 years in prison for raping more than 100 women.

    The men, members of a Mennonite group, secretly sedated their victims before the sex attacks.

    The victims' lawyer said the 2000-strong Mennonite community where the rapes happened welcomed the sentence.

    The group follows a strict moral code and rejects modern inventions such as cars and electricity.

    An eighth man was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years for supplying the sedative used to drug the women.

    The rapes happened in the Mennonite community of Manitoba, 150km (93 miles) north-east of the city of Santa Cruz.

    Shocking crimes

    The court heard that the men sprayed a substance derived from the belladonna plant normally used to anaesthetise cows through bedroom windows at night, sedating entire families.

    They then raped the women and girls. The youngest victim was nine years old.

    The exact number of those raped is not clear. Some women had no recollection of being raped, while others feared being ostracised in the deeply conservative community, lawyer Oswaldo Rivera said.

    Mr Rivera said almost 150 had taken part in the trial, but he feared there could be another 150 too ashamed to give evidence.

    He said some feared they would not be able to find a husband if it was known they had been raped, as women are expected to abstain from sex until marriage.

    Prosecutor Freddy Perez said colony elders suspected something was wrong when they wondered why one man was getting up so late in the mornings, and they decided to shadow him.

    He was then spotted jumping through a window into one of the victim's houses.

    The BBC's Mattia Cabitza in Santa Cruz said it proved difficult to gather evidence from the victims because of the community's isolation and patriarchal structure.

    The convicted men were also accused of threatening the fathers of some of the victims not to speak out.

    Irreversible damage

    Many of the victims speak only low German, the language of the Mennonite founding fathers, and have never learned Spanish.

    There are some 30-40,000 Mennonites in Paraguay and Bolivia.

    While many of them are indistinguishable from their neighbours and have religious beliefs very similar to mainline Protestant and Evangelical groups, others reject modern life and live in isolated communities.

    Manitoba Colony, where the rapes happened, is an ultra-conservative community, with no paved roads or electricity.

    Its members move around by horse-drawn buggy and dress in traditional Mennonite dress.

    Mr Rivera welcomed the sentences but said he feared some of the women had suffered irreversible damage.

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    Senior Member SuchAClassicGirl's Avatar
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    This is 18 different kinds of fuct
    Quote Originally Posted by blighted star
    I was about to be annoyed that this thread was still active, but I see now it's morphed into offers of sex for chilli confectionary, so carry on guys :)

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    Maybe 18 plus kinds


    http://content.time.com/time/world/a...087711,00.html




    Katarina Wall remembers little about the worst night of her life. She recalls waking up in her bed, seeing a man on top of her and feeling her arms too heavy to lift in resistance. The next thing she knew, it was morning — but her pajamas were torn, and the sheets beneath her and her sleeping husband were stained with blood from her vagina. "It was like a terrible dream," Wall, 36, tells TIME in her native Low German, weeping as she stands outside a courthouse in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

    But the nightmare appears to be all too real. Wall is among 130 women and girls of the Mennonite colony in Manitoba Colony, who claim that from 2005 to '09, the same cloudy horror visited them. They're the victims of what is allegedly one of the ugliest sex scandals in the history of the Mennonites, a pacifist Christian Anabaptist denomination founded in Europe in the 1500s, if not Bolivia and South America. In a criminal trial now under way in nearby Santa Cruz, Peter Weiber, 48, a Mennonite veterinarian, is accused of transforming a chemical meant to anesthetize cows into a spray to be used on humans. For four years, Weiber and eight other Mennonite men allegedly sprayed the chemical through bedroom windows in Manitoba at night, sedating entire families and raping the females. One of the men is a fugitive, the others have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, each faces a maximum 30-year prison sentence.

    (See a gallery of the 20th century's most notorious crimes.)

    The criminal charges detail depraved acts few would expect inside a supposedly upright sect like the Mennonites. "When there were no grown women" in the houses that the men allegedly targeted, says Wilfredo Mariscal, an attorney for the victims, "they did what they wanted with the kids." Court-ordered medical exams reveal a 3-year-old girl with a broken hymen (most likely, doctors note, from finger and not penis penetration). The formal indictments list victims ages 8 to 60 years old, including one who is mentally retarded and another who was pregnant and sent into premature labor after allegedly being raped by one of the men — her brother.

    (UPDATE: On Thursday, Aug. 25, a Bolivian court found seven of the eight defendants on trial guilty of the rape charges and sentenced them to 25 years in prison each. Weiber the veterinarian was sentenced to 12 years, a lesser penalty, because the court said he was merely an accomplice. The defense lawyers say the verdicts will be appealed. The ninth man charged in the rapes is still at large.)

    More than 50,000 Mennonites with roots in Canada and Germany populate the Bolivian lowlands, and they are notoriously reclusive, especially in ultraconservative "old colonies" like Manitoba Colony. Their world of horse-drawn buggies and sorghum fields is segregated from the surrounding indigenous country; cars and electricity are prohibited, as are music, sports and television. Women's lives are even more circumscribed. They don't attend school after the age of 12 and, unlike many Mennonite men, rarely learn Spanish. They wear uniform, hand-sewn dresses, raise large families and seldom venture to (and almost never beyond) bustling Santa Cruz, three hours by car and cultural light-years away from Manitoba.

    That entrenched, patriarchal seclusion, say those familiar with such communities, can breed behavioral rot and a culture of cover-up. "The denial of major problems in these colonies for decades has significantly compounded the problem," says Abe Warkentin, founding editor of the German-language Die Mennonitische Post, a newspaper published in Canada that circulates widely among the hundreds of thousands of Mennonites who live throughout Latin America. In the 1990s, for example, Mexico's Mennonite community was rocked by a wave of marijuana trafficking that featured pot being smuggled into the U.S. in large cheese wheels.

    Indeed, Mennonites in less conservative Bolivian colonies say that when news of the alleged rapes reached them, there was grief — but not shock. Many Manitoba Colony members themselves now acknowledge the trouble. Abram Peters — whose son, defendant Abram Peters Dick, is accused of buying his first drugging spray from Weiber at age 14 —says the men are scapegoats for Manitoba's broader sins. "Rapes happen [in Manitoba] all the time," he claims, "within families too."




    http://lisawiltse.photoshelter.com/g...000Kk4eH9p7zJQ
    Last edited by blighted star; 12-22-2013 at 06:05 PM.

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