THE STATEMENT OF
SISTER DIANNA ORTIZ
BEFORE
THE CONGRESSIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CAUCUS
June 24, 1998

Thank you all for coming.  As a survivor of torture, I want to urge you to 
support declassification of United States government documents that shed 
light on human rights abuses.  Simply by declassifying documents, our 
government can save lives.  Survivors of human rights violations need to 
know as much as possible about who committed the atrocities against them.  
With this information, justice is possible, and only justice can lay the 
foundation for reconciliation, stability, and peace.  Guatemala and Honduras 
are two countries that would benefit immeasurably from full declassification.  
The sticking point in these instances seems to be that the US has supported 
the abusers.

Take my case, for example. In 1989, while I was working as a missionary in 
Guatemala, I was abducted and brutally tortured by Guatemalan security 
agents.  My back was burned over 100 times with cigarettes.  I was gang-raped 
repeatedly.  I was beaten, and I was tortured psychologically, as well--I was 
lowered into a pit where injured women, children, and men writhed and 
moaned, and the dead decayed, under swarms of rats. Finally, I was forced to 
stab another human being.

Throughout the ordeal, my Guatemalan torturers said that if I did not 
cooperate, they would have to communicate with Alejandro.  My last few 
minutes in detention, I met Alejandro, whom the torturers referred to as 
their boss.  He was tall and fair skinned and spoke halting Spanish, with a 
think American accent.  His English was American, flawless, unaccented.  
When I asked him if he was an American, his answer was evasive: "Why do 
you want to know?"

He told me to get into his jeep and said he would take me to a friend of his at 
the United States embassy, who would help me leave the country.  During 
the ride, he enjoined me to forgive my torturers and said if I didn't, there 
would be consequences for me.  He reminded me that my torturers has made 
videotapes and taken photos of the parts of the torture I was most ashamed 
of.  He said if I didn't forgive my torturers, he would have no choice but to 
release those photos and tapes to the press.  At that point, I jumped out of the 
jeep and ran.

For the last nine years, I have tried to stop running.  I have tried to face the 
torturers head on and demand answers, demand justice.  Instead of 
"forgiving" my torturers, I filed suit against the Guatemalan government and 
called for an investigation.  Like so many investigations in Guatemala, it led 
nowhere.  Guatemalan and US officials alike said in public and in private that 
I was a lesbian who had never been tortured but had sneaked out for a tryst.  
The 111 cigarette burns on my back were the result of kinky sex.

Two years ago, I held a five-week vigil before the White House, asking for the 
declassification of all US government documents related to human rights 
abuses in Guatemala since 1954, including documents on my own case.  I 
asked to know the identity of Alejandro.  The Justice Department had begun 
an investigation in August 1995, and the Intelligence Oversight Board had 
been investigating my case for more than a year, but I still had no answers.  
Finally, after weeks of fasting and camping day and night before the White 
House, a number of State Department documents were released to me.  The 
following year, various FBI documents were declassified, but none of these 
documents contained anything about the identities of my torturers or of their 
boss, Alejandro.

Efforts to obtain information through US government investigations also led 
nowhere.  The Department of Justice interviewed me for more than forty 
hours, during which time DOJ attorneys accused me of lying.  The 
interrogated my friends and family members and generally made it clear that 
I was the culprit, I was the one being investigated, not the US government 
officials who might have acted wrongly in my case.  Ultimately, the 
investigators seemed unable to comprehend the effects on a torture survivor 
of testifying in intricate detail for hours on end.  Extremely dangerous and 
painful flashbacks were the consequence in my case.  A torture survivor 
should never be asked to re-enter the torture chamber, to relive the brutal 
abuse.  After I had given the great majority of my testimony, I felt compelled 
to withdraw from direct participation in the DOJ investigation.  The 
investigators had the sketches I had made with the help of a professional 
forensic artist, delineating the characteristics of each torturer, including 
Alejandro, and investigators had my testimony, in detail.  The responsibility 
for finding answers lay with them.

Because I could no longer subject myself to the retraumatization brought on 
by the investigators' questions and manner, the DOJ closed my case.  Exactly 
what the DOJ's final conclusions were, I do not know.  I do know that as a 
result of the investigation, the DOJ came up with a 200+ page report, which is 
classified.  The Department of Justice told me the report was classified to 
protect sources and methods and to protect my own privacy.  Dan Seikely, 
who was in charge of the Department of Justice investigation, said only three 
people would be able to see the report: Attorney General Janet Reno, the 
deputy attorney general, and himself. Only four copies of the report existed, 
he said, and they would be kept under lock and key.

In recent months, however, it has become clear to me that a number of 
people have read the report.  A government official recently told me that he 
had seen the report and added that officials in the State Department also had 
seen in, as had Thomas Stroock, the US ambassador to Guatemala at the time 
I was abducted.  I canšt help but wonder how my government intends to 
protect my privacy by releasing the report to such individuals.  It was under 
Stroock's command that an embassy staff member told a visiting religious 
delegation--"I'm tired of all these lesbian nuns coming down to Guatemala."  
It was Stroock who said, a week after I was abducted, before any embassy 
member had interviewed me, "Her story as told is not accurate."  It was 
Stroock who told the State Department that my motives were questionable, 
that I had perhaps staged my own abduction to secure a cut-off of US aid to 
the Guatemalan army.  Yet it is Stroock to whom the US government gives 
the report--a report so private that even I cannot see it.

After he had read the DOJ report, Stroock spoke to a journalist, who in turn 
called me.  Stroock was informing the press of his access to the report.  In spite 
his questionable right to see it, he was making no secret of the privileges he 
enjoyed.  There are things in the report that I have kept secret, that I have 
been ashamed over--things that I didnšt tell DOJ investigators but that my 
friends revealed as they were being interrogated--and I have lived under this 
tacit blackmail: If I push for more answers in my case, or if I even file a 
Freedom of Information Act request to get the DOJ report declassified, the 
secret information the investigators have will be leaked.

Instead of having that information leaked, let me simply tell you:  I got 
pregnant as a result of the multiple gang rapes by my torturers, and unable to 
carry within me what they had engendered, what I could view only as a 
monster, the products of the men who had raped me, I turned to someone for 
assistance and I destroyed that life.  Am I proud of this decision? No.  But if I 
had to make the decision again, I believe I would again decide as I did eight 
year ago.  I had little choice.  My survival was so precarious at that time to 
have to grow within me what the torturers had left me would have killed 
me.  I tell you this simply to free myself so that I can proceed to uncover the 
truth.  Today, I am filing a FOIA to demand the DOJ report on my case.  After 
such anguish that the DOJ interviews caused me, I have the right to know 
what was learned in my case, what conclusions were reached and why.  I 
demand access to the report, the same access that members of the State 
Department, Thomas Stroock, and members of the Intelligence Oversight 
Board have had, in spite of Seikelyšs guarantee of confidentiality.

I want to be able to evaluate the thoroughness of the investigation so that I 
can make informed decisions about what step to take next.  My torturers were 
never brought to justice.  It is possible that, individually, they will never be 
identified or apprehended.  And in some senses, I would like to resign myself 
to the fact and move on.  I have a responsibility, however, to the people of 
Guatemala and to the people of the world, a responsibility to insist on 
accountability where accountability is possible.  If the US government was 
involved in my torture in Guatemala, in what other countries of the world 
are torturers receiving orders from Americans?  We have to know what the 
United States has done and where.  For our own peace of mind as US citizens 
and for the good of the citizens of the world, we need to files released.  If the 
US has done nothing wrong, then we can all rest easy.  If the US is culpable, 
we must know this and expose this and take steps to ensure that our 
government never again collaborates with or hires torturers, in any place, for 
any reason.