Mennonite Weekly Review

The story of Mennonite men drugging and raping women on Old Colony Mennonite settlements in Bolivia hit the news last summer, from local Spanish papers to The Guardian Weekly in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, English-language Mennonite media have given it scant attention as Mennonites struggle to respond appropriately, if at all.

“The silence is deafening,” said Abe Warkentin, founder of Die Mennonitische Post, a German newspaper that connects Mennonites across the Americas. He pleads with Mennonite Central Committee “to address these problems the same way MCC has addressed other issues so effectively.”

Twelve men are accused for the 140 officially confirmed cases of rape at the 2,000-member Manitoba Colony. Mistrust, denials and suspicion of authorities make it difficult to accurately report the extent of the tragedy.

Anecdotal reports suggest such abuse is ongoing, affecting neighboring colonies as well.

Excommunication is the main form of discipline available to colony leaders. Colonists took a vigilante approach in response to circumstantial evidence against one man. After neighbors tied him to a tree by his arms with his feet dangling for nine hours, Franz Klassen did not recover movement in his arms and died.

Missionaries have been concerned about domestic abuse on the colonies for years. Kurze Nachrichten Aus Mexiko (Brief News from Mexico), a Low-German Internet news source, says a drugging-and-rape incident was reported five years ago.

Staff of Family Life Network, a Canadian Mennonite Brethren ministry that sponsors Low-German radio programs in Latin America, reported in 2000 about “the church in crisis” on Old Colony settlements in Mexico. (The first Old Colony settlers in Bolivia came from Mexico in 1967).

In 2008 FLN staff said letters received from Old Colony teen listeners in Bolivia told of “addictions, depression and sexual abuse common in the colonies.”

Some have called the incidents a wake-up call for North American Mennonites to address the poverty, lack of education and denial of women’s dignity in the closed, patriarchal structure of Old Colony Mennonite society.