While Ecuador was one of the first countries to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1997, much of the older generation remains very conservative, and the LGBT community faces harsh discrimination.

Homosexuality is legal in Ecuador but an investigation found that gay people were being forced to undergo so-called conversion therapy in "de-homosexualization" secret clinics. For more than a decade these clinics have taken gay and lesbian people brought in by a relative to help "correct" their sexual orientation. The conversion clinics are often operated clandestinely within unregulated drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers.

Activists say they are abused, raped, and beaten, to help "cure" their mental illness through illegal treatments.

Campaigners calling for courts to deliver justice to eradicate the hundreds of unlicensed clinics once and for all. Read more via Latina