The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia: Facts vs. Fiction

At the 2023 Oscar Awards, Sarah Polley's Women Talking won for Best Writing (Best Adapted Screenplay). The story is a fictionalized version of true events that occurred within a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia from 2005-2009. So where does the reality end and fiction begin?

Just as portrayed, in reality, an order of several hundred fundamentalist, ultra-traditional Mennonite people were, in fact, deeply disturbed for years by gruesome encounters with - what many of the men described as - violent "ghosts" or "demons" or even "women's imaginations".

The pattern was always the same, dozens of girls as young as 3, women of all ages, and some young men would wake up groggy, bruised, disoriented, genitals in excruciating pain and often bloody, but with no recollection of what had happened. No one seemed to know the cause.

The traditions of the community did not allow for sex education, so women lacked even the vocabulary to describe what exactly they were feeling. Additionally, to them, marriage as a virgin is one of the most important aspects of womanhood, so shame kept many families silent.

This went on for years with an estimated 200 victims, until finally a man was caught in the home of drugged women. The men of the order held the man in custody and got him to confess and implicate 8 other men. All but 1 - the drug dealer - were from within their small community.

They decided that the crimes were beyond the ability of the colony to resolve, so they were sent to local police. However, just as portrayed in the film, the women were pressured to forgive the attackers or else not be allowed into heaven after death, and face eternal damnation.

This where the film and reality depart. The film largely centers around philosophical conversations and debates amongst the women as they vote and decide whether to leave the colony, stay and fight for change, or to keep the status quo and stay silent.

In Women Talking, the group leaves and ventures into an unknown world. In reality, the women stayed and largely their lives continued much the same as they had been before. The women mostly spoke German, so escaping to Spanish-speaking Bolivia was even more impossible than shown.

It was not shown in the film, but 8 men were convicted of rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison. They had acquired a chemical used to castrate bulls, sprayed it into homes at night, rendering entire households sedated, in order to commit brutal gang rapes.

The Oscar forWomen Talking was well-deserved, as it was an expert portrayal of the book by former Mennonite Miriam Toews and investigation by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky.

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