The Mennonite Ghost Rapes Of Bolivia (Stunned!Jeebus,Jeebus,Jeebus....Still in shock....)
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.
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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.
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Helena, like the other rape victims in Manitoba, was never offered the chance to speak with a professional therapist, even though she said she would if given the opportunity. “Why would they need counseling if they weren’t even awake when it happened?” Manitoba Colony Bishop Johan Neurdorf, the community’s highest authority, had told a visitor back in 2009 after the perpetrators were caught.
Other victims I interviewed—those who awoke during the rapes, as well as those with no memory of the night—said that they would also have liked to speak with a therapist about their experiences but that doing so would be nearly impossible because there are no Low German-speaking sexual-trauma recovery experts in Bolivia.
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Much, much more: http://www.vice.com/read/the-ghost-rapes-of-bolivia-000300-v20n8?Contentpage=-1
Reading this was like watching a horror movie that is all too real.
The depravity in ths community is beyond my comprehension.
I hope something will be done, but after reading the whole story, I don't have high hopes.
smh.....smh.....smh.....smh....smh....
= new reply since forum marked as read
The story doesn't even seem possible, but too many people are certain it is, with no doubts whatsoever.
Bolivia arrests 8 Mennonite men accused of raping more than 60 women at their farm community
6-24-09
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3936513
Mennonite father dies in Bolivia after being hung for nine hours
9-17-09
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6579451
Life in a remote Mennonite community continues in the aftermath of a scandal
10-22-10
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x263625
Bolivian Mennonites jailed for serial rapes
8-26-11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x623866
Earlier this month: A Verdict in Bolivia's Shocking Case of the Mennonite Rapes
8-27-11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x623867
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Arrested Bolivian Mennonites
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