Mennonite father dies in Bolivia after being hung for nine hours

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Mennonite father dies in Bolivia after being hung for nine hoursDeath comes three months after prosecutors charged eight Mennonite men with raping dozens of women

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 September 2009 18.30 BST

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. 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.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/17/bolivia-mennonite-rape

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Earlier story:

Page last updated at 02:28 GMT, Thursday, 25 June 2009 03:28 UK
Bolivian Mennonite women 'raped'

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/45968000/jpg/_45968892_jex_393401_de27-1.jpg

Seven members of Bolivia's Mennonite Christian community have been detained over the alleged rape of 60 women or girls from their own community.

Alleged victims in the Manitoba colony, which is in Bolivia's eastern lowlands, include girls as young as 14, a prosecutor said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8117999.stm

[kestrel91316]

1. How very strange. Mennonites are by tradition extremely pacifist and

nonviolent. That said, I know virtually nothing about the branches down in S Am.

[8 track mind]

8. That is quite strange

My folks raise a couple of beef cattle every year or so and we use a mennonite butcher. His whole family helps run the business and they are some of the hardest working people you've ever met. They have used him for 20 years now. I think this has to be the first time I've ever heard of a Mennonite running afoul of the law. Crazy.

[pipi_k]

11. There is a community of Mennonites in my area

They are industrious and, from all appearances, completely non-violent.

But, like you said, maybe it's a different sect or branch in SA

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. doesn't mean their all great. Every culture has hardworking industrious folk.

[pipi_k]

16. Um, yeah. that's what I said. Really. I said that.

the ones near me are industrious and non-violent, but maybe the ones in SA are a different sect or something.

[marshall]

31. It sounds like a less violent punishment than other groups'

It sounds similar to the stocks used by Puritans in Colonial America. No beatings, floggings, or canings--just detain the person in a public area. If he was hanging in a way that didn't cause actual pain but just held him in place, he may have died from some other complication.

[Beaverhausen]

2. my god that entire story is horrendous

[Bobbieo]

3. Is this the cult that has their women wear a circular patch of cloth on the back of their heads?

I often see them in the local groceries.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. There are different branches of Mennonites.

Some dress as 'plain people' while others dress like mainstream Americans. There's a rather large Mennonite Church in my area and the members there dress like everyone else. I don't know if I'd consider them a cult or not -- they seem to be similar to Baptists.

[Scruffy1]

15. Menontes

The mennonites are really a offshoot from the German Lutheran Church in the early nineteenth century. I grew up with Mennonites and have lived in Mennonite towns. Their social practices vary widely by group
and location-but in general maintain an agrarian based lifestyle. My drinking buddy in college was a Mennonite and his mother taught nursing. The branch around where I grew up doesn't wear buttons and stays socially separate from the rest of the area. This can be a recipe for hiding sexual abuse and incest in a few cases-but it is certainly not the norm. The reason for no buttons is anti military.

[Critters2]

26. There's no connection between Mennonites and Lutheranism.

The Mennonites were influenced by Luther's contemporary (but with whom Luther strongy disagreed) the Swiss theologian, Ulrich Zwingli. The Anabaptists believed, however, that Zwingli's reforms didn't go far enough. They became pacifist and challenged the connections of the state to the church. They became unified under the leadership of the Dutch reformer Menno Simons, from whom they took their name.

[yellowcanine]

27. Mennonites/Anabaptists split from the Swiss Reform Church headed by

Ulrich Zwingli in 1525. The Amish split from the rest of the Mennonites/Anabaptists around 1693. As a group they were never associated with German Lutherans and were an established church in their own right long before the early 19th century. Most of the large migrations of Mennonites and Amish to America took place in the early 18th century at the invitation of William Penn in Pennsylvania - which is why they initially settled in PA.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

18. Not Baptists...Anabaptists

The religion is very peace-oriented.

Still, there's good and bad in any group...religious or otherwise.

[madokie]

17. All prim and proper

starched and all. Yup that's the cult.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Some Russian Pentecostals dress like that, too

There were Mennonites in the Oregon town where I lived for seven years. The women in that group wore a transparent gauzy cap on the backs of their heads.

[JVS]

5. DAMN! That is some 16th century style law enforcement!

[MichaelHarris]

6. Religion,

the new date rape drug.

[derby378]

7. Heroin addiction among Mexican Mennonites was the only problem I ever heard of...

...until today. This is really disturbing, especially for a congregation that mirrors Quakers, Hutterites, and the Amish in their commitment to nonviolence.

[Tx4obama]

9. We should do that here in the USA

We should do that here in the USA
We should hang all murderers and child rapists and televise it.
Putting murderers & child rapists in prison for life is not curbing the problem and only costing the tax-payers billions of dollars each year.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. Except should the accuser one day recant, which although rare does indeed happen, then

we will have murdered an innocent person. As much as I want justice for rape and molestation victims, I can't overlook this "collateral damage" any more than I overlook the kind that has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. :(

[Tx4obama]

20. I disagree...

With the technology today there are many many cases that DNA proves that the right person has been convicted.
I was talking about the cases in which there is ABSOLUTELY no doubt.
Like the monster Garrido out in California that kidnapped and raped JayCee for 18 years.

[pitohui]

35. there were 60 women raped in this case, you think they were ALL lying?

i realize that there is a large class of folks on DU who always assume that any woman is lying about being raped but it beggars belief that you accept the possibility that 60 women, and their husbands and fathers, were ALL lying about the attacks

this was a gang of predators, i don't care that they happen to be mennonites wearing old-fashioned clothes, they were fucking predators and needed to be dealt with

[NYC Liberal]

28. Execute child rapists? Are you nuts?

That takes away the sole incentive for the rapist not to simply kill the only witness. Why wouldn't you if the penalty was the same whether you rape, or rape and kill?

[provis99]

32. nonsense. Rapists never think they will get caught.

Criminals in general don't take any account of what the punishment for their crime is, because they all think they are smarter and more careful than every other criminal who has been caught.

[NYC Liberal]

33. Right. I know that. Which is why the death penalty *doesn't work*

It doesn't deter crime, so there is no point to it other than "getting revenge."

[Treo]

34. I bet it deters the criminal it's used on from ever doing it again NT

[merh]

13. Is this an extreme faction of the Mennonites?

They seem so much more violent than the Mennonites I have ever known. I've never heard or read of the Mennonites using such barbaric punishment before.

The crimes the men are accused of cannot be blamed on the fact that they are Mennonites. However, it appears that for this sect of the religion, the punishment can.

.

[krkaufman]

14. Hmmm... Have to wonder if this action was Mennonite "justice" ....

... or silencing of a potential witness in the rape cases. If this guy was allegedly involved in the rapes, what the heck was he doing out of prison?

[Art_from_Ark]

25. It sounds like it could be "silencing a witness" to me

Or maybe he was just a black sheep of the settlement (since he had already been put in a cage for such "transgressions" as "drinking alcohol" and "slackening off on his farm work", so the others used the rape charges as an excuse to off him.

[pitohui]

37. "transgressions" such as abusing his wife and children but you leave that out, i notice

"transgressions" seems a little silly in quotes when you're talking wife and child beating, don't it?

[Odin2005]

19. Serves the monster right.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

21. Confusing. Did the 8 men accused of raping women and children hang this man?

:shrug:

[pitohui]

36. no, the community felt he was also involved in the rapes but had escaped arrest

it sounds like they were sick and tired of waiting for the local police to pick him up

[The abyss]

23. Very fascinating stuff!

Judi, thanks for posting this and the earlier articles you have covered!

The history of this sect is very interesting reading.

One of the main reasons I ghost around on DU is because of articles like this and the little glimpses they provide from a wide variety of commentators.

[Critters2]

24. This supports Girard's theses. Even among groups that have

pacifist teachings, stress in the community leads to violence and scapegoating. How very sad. One would have hoped the pacifist traditions would have overcome this, but without naming the mimetic impulses, it's very hard to stop them.

Very, very sad.

[LeftHander]

29. Good old fashioned religious justice...happy god time....nt

[HamdenRice]

30. Wait till they start investigating the buggy whip drive bys! nt