ECUADOR — When Dona­to Sanchez, a trans­gen­der man, walked into a ​“gay rehab” clin­ic for the first time, he didn’t know he was going to stay. His father had con­vinced him to ​“check out the facil­i­ties,” noth­ing more. Sanchez had been told that if he chose to enter the clin­ic, it would ​“be of my own free will.” At the time, Sanchez iden­ti­fied as a gay woman, which his par­ents nev­er accept­ed. He had run away from home at 16, return­ing only because he had no money.

'All I ever wanted was for [my parents] to understand me. Nothing more. But that never happened.'

But as he and his father walked through the clinic’s cold, ster­ile hall­way, he was seized with fear — and when he turned, he saw his father was gone. A large guard appeared and grabbed him. Sanchez strug­gled and tried to scream, but the guard seized him by his throat and squeezed. Two nurs­es dragged him to a bath­room, stripped him, threw him in a cold show­er and dressed him in a hos­pi­tal gown. ​“I didn’t see my fam­i­ly until four months lat­er,” Sanchez says. ​“Not a call, not a mes­sage, noth­ing.” He was 18 at the time.

That was the begin­ning of Sanchez’s nine months in a rehab clin­ic in Ecuador called Puente à la Vida (Bridge to Life), to be ​“cured.” The ​“cure” includ­ed reg­u­lar beat­ings, ver­bal abuse, dai­ly Bible study and a bas­tardized ver­sion of the Alco­holics Anony­mous pro­gram, in which sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion was treat­ed like addiction.

Local LGBTQ rights groups esti­mate there are more than 200 of these clin­ics in Ecuador, also known as ​“gay-cur­ing cen­ters.” They are ille­gal and oper­ate clan­des­tine­ly, reg­is­tered as pri­vate clin­ics for drug and alco­hol addiction.

“Sex­u­al con­ver­sion ther­a­py” con­tin­ues to be prac­ticed in many coun­tries, includ­ing the Unit­ed States. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Orga­ni­za­tion have called these clin­ics a ​“seri­ous threat to the health and well being of affect­ed people.”

The irony is that Ecuador has long had some of the world’s strongest LGBTQ pro­tec­tions and is one of the few coun­tries to out­law these clin­ics. Twen­ty years ago, Ecuador banned dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion in its con­sti­tu­tion. A decade lat­er, its 2008 con­sti­tu­tion legal­ized same-sex civ­il unions. But the clin­ics remain open.

Bridge to Life’s con­ver­sion treat­ment, Sanchez recounts, also includes berat­ing gay men to be more tough and mas­cu­line, and ​“teach­ing” les­bian women to be more fem­i­nine. This has been report­ed in oth­er Ecuadore­an clin­ics, too, where women are forced to wear make­up, dress in miniskirts and high heels, and parade in front of guards in attempts to arouse them. In some cas­es, women are raped by male guards as part of the ​“deho­mo­sex­u­al­iza­tion” process.

Those who don’t abide by the clin­ics’ strict rules incur harsh pun­ish­ment. At Bridge to Life, Sanchez says, peo­ple were sen­tenced to silence for days at a time, forced to sleep on the tile floors, deprived of meals, fed horse tran­quil­iz­ers or beat­en with the flat side of a machete.

Like Sanchez, most peo­ple in the clin­ics are placed there by their fam­i­lies, often by force. Some fam­i­lies drug their queer rel­a­tives or enlist the police to haul them in. Fam­i­lies pay the clin­ics $500 to $1,500 a month.

“From a psy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, this destroys a per­son,” says Edgar Zuni­ga Salazar, a psy­chol­o­gist with the Ecuadore­an Net­work of Psy­chol­o­gy for LGBTI Diver­si­ty. Salazar says most of these patients expe­ri­ence post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. Their symp­toms include night­mares, para­noia, self-iso­la­tion and an extreme drop in self-worth.

While Ecuador main­tains that these prac­tices are pro­hib­it­ed, pun­ished and in no way pro­mot­ed by the gov­ern­ment, local activists tell anoth­er sto­ry. Cayetana Salao with Taller Comu­ni­ca­cion Mujer, an LGBTQ rights group, says many clin­ics receive sanc­tions from the Min­istry of Health and tem­porar­i­ly close down, only to make a few admin­is­tra­tive changes and quick­ly reopen. The Min­istry of Health did not respond to In These Times’ requests for comment.

Ecuador con­tin­ues to see major anti-LGBTQ sen­ti­ment, main­ly from grow­ing Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian move­ments that receive major financ­ing from abroad, say activists.

In Octo­ber 2017, one of these groups, Con Mis Hijos No Te Metes (Don’t Mess with My Kids), orga­nized a mas­sive protest against teach­ing gen­der stud­ies in schools. The group is sup­port­ed by the inter­na­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive group Cit­i­zen-Go, on whose board sits Bri­an Brown, pres­i­dent of the U.S.-based Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Marriage.

One Ecuadore­an con­gress­man affil­i­at­ed with Don’t Mess with My Kids, Julio Rosas, received cam­paign fund­ing from U.S.-based Stephen Guschov, for­mer direc­tor of engage­ment for the evan­gel­i­cal Lib­er­ty Coun­sel, con­sid­ered an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Center.

“All I ever want­ed was for [my par­ents] to under­stand me. Noth­ing more. But that nev­er hap­pened,” Sanchez says. ​“There’s no ther­a­py for that.”