Confronting Demons In A Mennonite Colony
Time|April 15, 2019

IT WAS A HISTORIC—AND HORRIFYING—CASE OF GASlighting.

Bethanne Patrick
Confronting Demons In A Mennonite Colony

One hundred thirty Mennonite women and children were drugged and raped in their Bolivian colony over a period of four years, starting in 2005. Their abusers, men in their own community, told the victims, 3 to 60 years old, that their attacks had been perpetrated by ghosts.

Miriam Toews fictionalizes this ugly chapter of history in her latest novel, Women Talking. In her version of the story, eight Mennonite women, also in Bolivia, begin to hold secret meetings after suffering repeated violations in 2009. They have just two days before their fathers and husbands return from a trip to a nearby city to bail out their accused attackers, and they must meet in secret to evade those around them who remain loyal to the absent menfolk. Since these women are illiterate, deemed unworthy of education by the men who rule their world, they ask a previously shunned Mennonite man, August Epp, to keep “minutes” of their talks.

This story is from the April 15, 2019 edition of Time.

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This story is from the April 15, 2019 edition of Time.

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