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You can listen to human rights lawyer Mónica Leonardo read Paola's essay below.
It was seven years ago that I first learned about the private “clinics” that claim to cure homosexuality in Ecuador. My first thought was that it could have been me being held there. I decided that, as a gay woman, I needed to change.
Two years later, I came out to my family and was accepted by them. As a photographer, I wanted to document this moment.
In my country, many young women and men are not so fortunate.
I discovered that around 200 clandestine centers still operate in the gaps between progressive laws and conservative religious beliefs. In Ecuador 80% of the population is Catholic and the church in general has very conservative views on homosexuality. Until 1997, same-sex relationships and romantic activity in Ecuador were illegal and punishable with four to eight years in prison. In 2011, several centers offering to “cure” homosexuality were reported and investigated, with dozens of additional cases coming to light. Many parents and families still believe that homosexuality is an addiction, a sexual disorder that they believe can be “cured” by some harsh discipline.
The first few private rehabilitation centers emerged in the country in the 1970s, several decades before any regulatory body existed to oversee them. The method of treatment in these clinics is an “Until You Change” mentality. For many years, the brutality of these practices has gone unpunished. Some of the most extreme practices include the use of restraints, tranquilizers, beatings, withholding of food, and other forms of humiliating treatment. Most patients are kidnapped and drugged against their will by their own family.
Many of these centers have strong religious beliefs tied to evangelical Christian groups, with Bible study being an enforced daily routine. Many activists believe that in some instances these centers are financed by religious institutions overseas and that they also have ties to the “ex-gay” movement.
Unfortunately, the majority of these centers remain open because they are disguised as treatment facilities for alcoholics and drug addicts. While some individual centers do fall into those categories, there is an alarming and growing number of LGBT people being admitted to these centers every day. The laws prohibit these clinics to treat homosexuals. Still, these centers remain open due to the lack of vigilance by the Ecuadorean government, which does not strictly enforce existing regulations, as well as the fact that in Ecuador a corrupt system of bribery exists. The truth is that these clinics are mainly run by ex-substance abusers themselves and in some cases, doctors lend their names to give the clinics credibility. One of the reasons behind the alarming growth of these centers is monetary gain, with the average cost of treatment being $500-$800 per month for each patient.
In 2011, this issue made headlines in a number of international newspapers after a Change.org petition forced the Ecuadorean government to take action. Together with the help of other activist groups, they managed to close around 30 clinics. But in the recent years, many of them have found a way to open back up. Years after, the issue has completely cooled down, not because these clinics have ceased to exist, but rather because of the short memory span of Ecuadorean society and the ongoing corrupt policies that keep these clinics open.
For me, the chance to act came in late 2015. I spent six months interviewing a woman who had been sent to one of these religious “clinics” by her parents and locked up for a number of months. With time, I gathered more first-person accounts. Women told me of sham “diagnoses” and “treatments,” carried out in the name of the Bible.
The secrecy of these centers made it impossible to approach this issue using traditional documenting practices as I would do in my work as a photographer. Instead I set out to reconstruct a series of images, based on the survivor testimonies I collected. The victims asked to remain anonymous. I decided to act as the protagonist of the photos myself because I had spent months invested in these stories, while also having personal experience with the difficulties of being gay in a country as conservative as Ecuador. I carefully researched locations, other actors and props, and even trained and rehearsed theatre methods closely working with a theatre director to help me further explore the experiences of women in these abusive institutions.
The survivor testimonies I gathered were heartbreaking, with multiple accounts of the different methods used for both psychological and physical abuse. The perversion of pills and prayer books; the regime of forced femininity through make-up, short skirts and high heels; torture by rope or rubber gloves; the possibility of “corrective” rape: I felt a huge responsibility to show the very real horrors these survivors have been through.
These staged images allow us to see what was never meant to be seen. They are a form of visual activism, a way to denounce the existence of these centers and for so many people to learn about them for the first time.
The human rights of these young women and men are disregarded by Ecuador’s government. These centers are camouflaged, hidden in remote areas and small towns in Ecuador, and the Ecuadorean state does not currently have the capacity to regulate these clandestine places. In some cases, these horrendous tortures occur inside of churches that are hard to be tracked down by the government. In the worst instances, the government is even somewhat complicit.
[Ed: Content warning – some readers may find some of the following images to be distressing.]
