The Guardian - UK, Associated Press, September 17, 2009
Mennonite father dies in Bolivia after being hung for nine hours
Death comes three months after prosecutors charged eight Mennonite men with raping dozens of women
A Mennonite father of nine has died after being hung from a pole for nine hours by 22 of his brethren who accused him of rape, abuse and violating their religious rules, police said.
There have been no arrests for the death of Franz Wieler Kloss, 37, but police said community members thought he was a participant in a two-year mass rape case that was uncovered this summer.
"The Mennonites punished Kloss according to their customs and that punishment killed him," said Cololnel Miguel Gonzales, special crime unit director.
The murder comes three months after Bolivian prosecutors charged eight men from several Mennonite farming villages with raping dozens of women at the settlement. [see story below] Prosecutors say more than 60 women, from 11 to 47 years old, have accused the men of rape. The men were suspected of using some form of aerosol spray to drug the women.
Kloss had been locked in a cage as punishment several times for a variety of alleged sins including mistreating his wife and children, drinking alcohol, and slacking off on his farm work, according to Bolivia's El Deber newspaper.
His final punishment came almost two weeks ago, when his accusers tied him onto a pole and left him there for nine hours. When he was taken down he couldn't move his arms. He was taken to a hospital a few days later and placed on a respirator, but he died yesterday, police said.
Bolivia's insular Mennonite community lives traditionally, shunning modern conveniences such as electricity as they farm soybeans, corn and other crops. They use wagons, not cars, for transportation and sew their own clothes.
This article was found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/17/bolivia-mennonite-rape
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The Guardian - UK September 10, 2009
'The work of the devil': crime in a remote religious community
by Andres Schipani
Mennonite women and girls in the lowlands of east Bolivia. Photograph: Bojan Brecelj/Corbis
The road to Manitoba is dusty and the four-hour drive terribly hot. But at its end, there is a scene from a fairy tale. Shiny milk tanks line the entrance to farmhouses set amid impeccably manicured lawns. Laughing children pass on a horse-drawn carriage along a well-kept road without cars or lorries. Behind a gaggle of geese run a clutch of little blond girls wearing big straw hats with dark bows and flowery dresses.
But something has poisoned this apparent idyll. A little further on, three blue-eyed men sit by the roadside, all in the classical Mennonite outfit of dark overalls and baseball caps. One is Carlos Knodel. In the quiet sunshine, he tells me his family's scarcely believable story: Knodel's 57-year-old mother, his 29-year-old sister Ángelita, who has learning difficulties, his wife, his two teenage female cousins, his aunt and his pregnant sister-in-law have all been raped. Not – it's said – by outsiders, but by young men from within this devoutly religious 2,000-strong community. With breathtaking understatement, he tells me: "This has changed us. This has changed us for ever." The other two nod in agreement.
Here, in the lowlands of eastern Bolivia, a remote religious colony has been turned upside down. Investigators dealing with the case have arrested eight men and are questioning them about dozens of alleged rapes, but are now speculating that the number of victims could reach 300.
The eight men – all Mennonite, seven from Manitoba and one from a nearby community – have been charged with child abuse and rape. Their alleged victims range from five-year-old girls to women as old as 65.
The Mennonites are a Protestant group that fled religious persecution in 19th-century Europe to create isolated communities in America and elsewhere. Estimates suggest there are some 1.5 million worldwide. They follow the teachings of Menno Simons, a 16th-century radical Dutch Protestant reformist leader. Most are second- or third-generation Dutch; they reject wealth and power and to a certain extent the trappings of modern life. When North America modernised too much for their taste, some fled south to the less developed but fertile lands of Central and South America. Many went to Mexico in the early 1920s, where they were granted religious freedoms. But when they were stripped of some of those privileges in the late 30s and early 40s, some went even further south, to Bolivia's eastern lowlands and neighbouring Paraguay.
Since then, they have carved settlements out of the jungle. Now, about 50,000 of them live there in farming communities. Families tend to be large, often with six to 12 children. The most orthodox Mennonite colonies eschew all forms of modernity, from rubber tyres to electricity.
Mennonites traditionally handle crime and punishment themselves. But not this time. "This was way too big to deal with," says Johann Klassen, a community elder. "That is why we handed these people to the Bolivian authorities. We don't want them back."
Klassen knew the suspects. "I thought I knew them quite well," he says. "But I remember they were not hard workers." He adds: "There was always talk about those things happening here; there was a woman who said so, but no one believed her."
Some of the elders, including Klassen, became suspicious after they noticed that one of the men was getting up particularly late in the morning – Mennonites are devoted workers who start the day at sunrise – and followed him. They caught him about to break into a house. He then named seven other men. They were all locked up in a warehouse for a couple of days; there were suggestions that cells should be built, to keep them locked up for 15 years. Eventually the community's council of elders decided to hand them to the police.
Uncertainties abound. There is speculation that the alleged rapists used a narcotic spray to drug their victims and members of their families. "I remember smelling the spray," recalls Knodel. "It smelled terrible. It used to give me a horrible headache, make me vomit, feel dizzy. It was very hard to wake up in the mornings." His sister Ángelita is standing barefoot next to him beneath the porch, looking concerned. "I cannot remember a thing," she says in a faltering voice. Her mother thinks that she herself was raped several times but can only remember pain and seeing torchlight one night. Her family are still waiting for the results of forensic tests.
When the women and girls woke up in pain, or naked, some wives blamed their husbands. Some said it was the work of the devil. The same story is repeated at farm after farm. Two miles from the Knodels' property is the isolated farm of their cousins, the Neufeldts. They believe the rapists broke in several times, attacking the mother Isabel and her daughters, Inés and Sancha. "I've felt presences over and over again," says Isabel. "One night I felt something on my leg, but I couldn't wake up. I just managed to open one eye but fell asleep instantly again. A couple of mornings I woke up with my body aching, and really, really tired."
'I felt a lot of pain for days'
Speaking in Plattdeutsch or Low German – an old dialect that mixes German and Dutch – 15-year-old Inés says: "I woke up a couple of times with my nightclothes upside-down. I felt a lot of pain for a couple of days." According to the Bolivian forensic scientists working on the case, she had been raped three times. "And now . . . I don't know . . ." Her voice fades away.
Mennonite religious orthodoxy is emphatic that women must be virgins at marriage. This is an added worry for the victims. "I hope that when they turn 18 or 20, they will get married, because it was not their fault," says Peter, Inés's father. "I hope they won't have problems in finding a husband. But I don't know. This is the first time something like this has happened. The ministers are still deciding what to do."
Wherever they have settled, Mennonites have tended to lead quiet, dedicated, religiously inspired lives. They are known for their espousal of non-violence. Nevertheless, these events have started to change things. "If I had found this man raping my wife, I don't really know what I would have been capable of doing," says Knodel. "That is something not to be forgiven. The Bible says everything can be forgiven, but I don't think it is easy to forgive such a thing."
This view echoes around the community. A man named Juan tells me that he was gripped with rage after his wife was a victim of rape during her pregnancy. "After, my wife gave birth to a premature child that fitted in the palm of my hand," he says. "I am not sure if he will survive or if he will have life-lasting consequences. She is traumatised. This is too painful, too painful."
The alleged attacker is the woman's brother, Martin Wieler, a ginger-haired, long-faced man, who is accused of raping his pregnant sister twice: the first time he threatened to kill her if she told her husband; the second time she was deeply asleep.
Wieler is now in custody in the town of Cotoca, about 20 miles from Bolivia's richest city, Santa Cruz. He greets me from behind the bars, with an unnerving half-smile. He is being held, together with the other seven suspects, in a single white cell that looks more like the sleeping quarters in a refugee camp: rubber flip-flops, dirty sheets and towels, plastic Coca-Cola bottles filled with water and sliced lemons, and cigarette butts litter the floor. The eight men are lying on thin mats on the ground. They are expressionless.
"We have done nothing and we have nothing to say," one says. He is Abraham Wieler, an untrained veterinarian who is also being prosecuted for "forming a criminal gang" and supplying its members with Viagra pills and other drugs.
It is alleged that the gang raped women for about two years, some of them in neighbouring Mennonite communities. "But those colonies are more orthodox than Manitoba," says Freddy Perez, the Santa Cruz prosecutor. "It will be hard to make them talk to us. The women there are afraid of being pushed away by the community and their own husbands.
Perez says the trial is expected to start early next year; he hopes the men will serve at least 15 years behind bars, with no prospect of bail. "I feel I need to make every possible effort as the Mennonites are very concerned about these people being left free. This is the first time they have come to us. They've been very cooperative."
Despite the arrests, no one in Manitoba feels secure. Bars are being put on windows and locks on doors; this in a village where houses were traditionally left wide open. The tranquillity of this community has been replaced with paranoia. "There are more, there are still rapists around," Felipe, Knodel's brother, tells me. "We are living in fear now. This used to be a very peaceful community and people are scared, they cannot sleep in peace."
Sleeping in basements for safety
As I leave the community, I stop by Manitoba's small, red-brick church and peek through the window. Four women, of different ages, are praying together in silence. Two wear black headscarves, showing that they are married. The two others wear white scarves, meaning that they are single. Were these women victims; and if so, what will their futures hold?
Back on the road, Klassen is feeding the pigs on his farm. Wiping his forehead with a spotless white handkerchief, he says: "We are still worried. We are sure this is not the end. We think there are more. We feel we cannot trust anybody any longer. This is not over."
A few weeks later, Klassen's fears are confirmed when another man, Peter Kennel, is arrested. He had allegedly travelled to a neighbouring community with the intention of raping his sister-in-law. In his confession, Kennel said he began raping four years ago. "I raped about 23 women . . . I cannot say why, but after the first time it became a habit and I used to do it twice a week."
The prosecutor tells me that he has the names of at least three other men thought to be involved in the attacks.
Some of the families in Manitoba have apparently started sleeping in their basements for safety. "The Bible says that in the last days we will see such things," Abraham Waal, one of the town's elders, reportedly told prosecutors. "The devil must be very happy with all this."
Some names have been changed
This article was found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/mennonites-rape-bolivia
RELATED ARTICLES:
Bolivia: 8 Mennonite men accused of raping dozens of women and underage girl
Mennonite abuse survivor speaks out against church
Mennonite Church of God in Christ leaders knew of incest and did nothing
The Guardian - UK September 10, 2009
'The work of the devil': crime in a remote religious community
by Andres Schipani
Mennonite women and girls in the lowlands of east Bolivia. Photograph: Bojan Brecelj/Corbis
The road to Manitoba is dusty and the four-hour drive terribly hot. But at its end, there is a scene from a fairy tale. Shiny milk tanks line the entrance to farmhouses set amid impeccably manicured lawns. Laughing children pass on a horse-drawn carriage along a well-kept road without cars or lorries. Behind a gaggle of geese run a clutch of little blond girls wearing big straw hats with dark bows and flowery dresses.
But something has poisoned this apparent idyll. A little further on, three blue-eyed men sit by the roadside, all in the classical Mennonite outfit of dark overalls and baseball caps. One is Carlos Knodel. In the quiet sunshine, he tells me his family's scarcely believable story: Knodel's 57-year-old mother, his 29-year-old sister Ángelita, who has learning difficulties, his wife, his two teenage female cousins, his aunt and his pregnant sister-in-law have all been raped. Not – it's said – by outsiders, but by young men from within this devoutly religious 2,000-strong community. With breathtaking understatement, he tells me: "This has changed us. This has changed us for ever." The other two nod in agreement.
Here, in the lowlands of eastern Bolivia, a remote religious colony has been turned upside down. Investigators dealing with the case have arrested eight men and are questioning them about dozens of alleged rapes, but are now speculating that the number of victims could reach 300.
The eight men – all Mennonite, seven from Manitoba and one from a nearby community – have been charged with child abuse and rape. Their alleged victims range from five-year-old girls to women as old as 65.
The Mennonites are a Protestant group that fled religious persecution in 19th-century Europe to create isolated communities in America and elsewhere. Estimates suggest there are some 1.5 million worldwide. They follow the teachings of Menno Simons, a 16th-century radical Dutch Protestant reformist leader. Most are second- or third-generation Dutch; they reject wealth and power and to a certain extent the trappings of modern life. When North America modernised too much for their taste, some fled south to the less developed but fertile lands of Central and South America. Many went to Mexico in the early 1920s, where they were granted religious freedoms. But when they were stripped of some of those privileges in the late 30s and early 40s, some went even further south, to Bolivia's eastern lowlands and neighbouring Paraguay.
Since then, they have carved settlements out of the jungle. Now, about 50,000 of them live there in farming communities. Families tend to be large, often with six to 12 children. The most orthodox Mennonite colonies eschew all forms of modernity, from rubber tyres to electricity.
Mennonites traditionally handle crime and punishment themselves. But not this time. "This was way too big to deal with," says Johann Klassen, a community elder. "That is why we handed these people to the Bolivian authorities. We don't want them back."
Klassen knew the suspects. "I thought I knew them quite well," he says. "But I remember they were not hard workers." He adds: "There was always talk about those things happening here; there was a woman who said so, but no one believed her."
Some of the elders, including Klassen, became suspicious after they noticed that one of the men was getting up particularly late in the morning – Mennonites are devoted workers who start the day at sunrise – and followed him. They caught him about to break into a house. He then named seven other men. They were all locked up in a warehouse for a couple of days; there were suggestions that cells should be built, to keep them locked up for 15 years. Eventually the community's council of elders decided to hand them to the police.
Uncertainties abound. There is speculation that the alleged rapists used a narcotic spray to drug their victims and members of their families. "I remember smelling the spray," recalls Knodel. "It smelled terrible. It used to give me a horrible headache, make me vomit, feel dizzy. It was very hard to wake up in the mornings." His sister Ángelita is standing barefoot next to him beneath the porch, looking concerned. "I cannot remember a thing," she says in a faltering voice. Her mother thinks that she herself was raped several times but can only remember pain and seeing torchlight one night. Her family are still waiting for the results of forensic tests.
When the women and girls woke up in pain, or naked, some wives blamed their husbands. Some said it was the work of the devil. The same story is repeated at farm after farm. Two miles from the Knodels' property is the isolated farm of their cousins, the Neufeldts. They believe the rapists broke in several times, attacking the mother Isabel and her daughters, Inés and Sancha. "I've felt presences over and over again," says Isabel. "One night I felt something on my leg, but I couldn't wake up. I just managed to open one eye but fell asleep instantly again. A couple of mornings I woke up with my body aching, and really, really tired."
'I felt a lot of pain for days'
Speaking in Plattdeutsch or Low German – an old dialect that mixes German and Dutch – 15-year-old Inés says: "I woke up a couple of times with my nightclothes upside-down. I felt a lot of pain for a couple of days." According to the Bolivian forensic scientists working on the case, she had been raped three times. "And now . . . I don't know . . ." Her voice fades away.
Mennonite religious orthodoxy is emphatic that women must be virgins at marriage. This is an added worry for the victims. "I hope that when they turn 18 or 20, they will get married, because it was not their fault," says Peter, Inés's father. "I hope they won't have problems in finding a husband. But I don't know. This is the first time something like this has happened. The ministers are still deciding what to do."
Wherever they have settled, Mennonites have tended to lead quiet, dedicated, religiously inspired lives. They are known for their espousal of non-violence. Nevertheless, these events have started to change things. "If I had found this man raping my wife, I don't really know what I would have been capable of doing," says Knodel. "That is something not to be forgiven. The Bible says everything can be forgiven, but I don't think it is easy to forgive such a thing."
This view echoes around the community. A man named Juan tells me that he was gripped with rage after his wife was a victim of rape during her pregnancy. "After, my wife gave birth to a premature child that fitted in the palm of my hand," he says. "I am not sure if he will survive or if he will have life-lasting consequences. She is traumatised. This is too painful, too painful."
The alleged attacker is the woman's brother, Martin Wieler, a ginger-haired, long-faced man, who is accused of raping his pregnant sister twice: the first time he threatened to kill her if she told her husband; the second time she was deeply asleep.
Wieler is now in custody in the town of Cotoca, about 20 miles from Bolivia's richest city, Santa Cruz. He greets me from behind the bars, with an unnerving half-smile. He is being held, together with the other seven suspects, in a single white cell that looks more like the sleeping quarters in a refugee camp: rubber flip-flops, dirty sheets and towels, plastic Coca-Cola bottles filled with water and sliced lemons, and cigarette butts litter the floor. The eight men are lying on thin mats on the ground. They are expressionless.
"We have done nothing and we have nothing to say," one says. He is Abraham Wieler, an untrained veterinarian who is also being prosecuted for "forming a criminal gang" and supplying its members with Viagra pills and other drugs.
It is alleged that the gang raped women for about two years, some of them in neighbouring Mennonite communities. "But those colonies are more orthodox than Manitoba," says Freddy Perez, the Santa Cruz prosecutor. "It will be hard to make them talk to us. The women there are afraid of being pushed away by the community and their own husbands.
Perez says the trial is expected to start early next year; he hopes the men will serve at least 15 years behind bars, with no prospect of bail. "I feel I need to make every possible effort as the Mennonites are very concerned about these people being left free. This is the first time they have come to us. They've been very cooperative."
Despite the arrests, no one in Manitoba feels secure. Bars are being put on windows and locks on doors; this in a village where houses were traditionally left wide open. The tranquillity of this community has been replaced with paranoia. "There are more, there are still rapists around," Felipe, Knodel's brother, tells me. "We are living in fear now. This used to be a very peaceful community and people are scared, they cannot sleep in peace."
Sleeping in basements for safety
As I leave the community, I stop by Manitoba's small, red-brick church and peek through the window. Four women, of different ages, are praying together in silence. Two wear black headscarves, showing that they are married. The two others wear white scarves, meaning that they are single. Were these women victims; and if so, what will their futures hold?
Back on the road, Klassen is feeding the pigs on his farm. Wiping his forehead with a spotless white handkerchief, he says: "We are still worried. We are sure this is not the end. We think there are more. We feel we cannot trust anybody any longer. This is not over."
A few weeks later, Klassen's fears are confirmed when another man, Peter Kennel, is arrested. He had allegedly travelled to a neighbouring community with the intention of raping his sister-in-law. In his confession, Kennel said he began raping four years ago. "I raped about 23 women . . . I cannot say why, but after the first time it became a habit and I used to do it twice a week."
The prosecutor tells me that he has the names of at least three other men thought to be involved in the attacks.
Some of the families in Manitoba have apparently started sleeping in their basements for safety. "The Bible says that in the last days we will see such things," Abraham Waal, one of the town's elders, reportedly told prosecutors. "The devil must be very happy with all this."
Some names have been changed
This article was found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/mennonites-rape-bolivia
RELATED ARTICLES:
Bolivia: 8 Mennonite men accused of raping dozens of women and underage girl
Mennonite abuse survivor speaks out against church
Mennonite Church of God in Christ leaders knew of incest and did nothing
Missouri court rules Amish elders are "mandated reporters", must stand trial for failing to report child abuse
Amish man gets 20 years for child rape, wife gets probation for failing to report abuse, elders on trial next
Amish distrust of outsiders creates culture of fear and secrecy, prevents reporting child abuse to authorities
Amish man who sexually abused kids for years finally reported to police after third excommunication
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