In Ecuador, the ministry of health has started investigating and closing hundreds of so-called “ex-gay” torture clinics after more than 100,000 people joined a Change.org campaign, according to a press release.
Fundacion Causana, Taller de Comunicacion Mujer and Artikulacion Esporadika—a coalition of leading Ecuadorian women’s-rights activists—started the campaign after working with women who said they had escaped what they called “torture clinics.”
“After years of campaigning about the practice of torture rehab clinics that claim to cure homosexuality, the Ecuadorian government has committed to deconstructing the belief that homosexuality is a sickness,” said Fundacion Causana representative Karen Barba. “Using Change.org, we were able to achieve victory in closing down ex-gay torture clinics.”
One woman, Paola Ziritti, talked about her experience, the Huffington Post reported last November. “I spent two years in one such facility and for three months was shackled in handcuffs while guards threw water and urine on me,” said Ziritti, who detailed accounts of physical and sexual abuse during her “rehabilitation.” “Why is the clinic where I suffered still open?”