The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

by Kaethra 4 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

  • Kaethra
    Kaethra

    many familiar tactics...long, disturbing article, but worth a read:

    http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-ghost-rapes-of-bolivia-000300-v20n8

  • adamah
    adamah

    Here's a clickable link:

    http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-ghost-rapes-of-bolivia-000300-v20n8

    And an excerpt of the article:

    F or 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.

    Adam

  • Hortensia
    Hortensia

    yes, definitely disturbing, especially the powerlessness of the women and children who are being assaulted. That's what a theocratic government is, folks. Wickedness flourishes.

  • problemaddict
    problemaddict

    Horrifying. I love VICE both in magazine and show form.

  • ILoveTTATT
    ILoveTTATT

    I started to read it but couldn't go on for too long. Way too disturbing. Humanity: you deserve a triple facepalm U.U

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