NEW YORK Luis Mancheno remembers the moment he knew he had to get out of Ecuador.

He was 21, it was 2007, and he was living with his family in the capital city Quito. For 6 months, his evangelical Christian parents had sent him to conversion therapy in an attempt to make him not gay. This destructive form of therapy, of course, didnt work because it cant and one night Mancheno decided to go with a friend to a gay bar.

At the bar, Mancheno says he and his friend were drugged. He woke up with his pants down, in his car, on the edge of a cliff. The car had crashed into a light post. His friend was unconscious in the backseat, also with his pants pulled down.

And then I realized that [whoever did this] had painted the car Maricn which means faggot in Spanish, Mancheno recalled. And the only reason why I was still alive and my friend was still alive is because there was a light post. Because other than that, the car would have rolled down the cliff and we would have died.

Mancheno says he couldnt tell his parents about the incident. They believe that every, anything bad that will be happening to me will be because I was gay, he said.

And the police werent any help either.

I was telling the police officer that I was at this gay bar, he stopped taking notes, Mancheno said. He closed the notebook that he was using to take notes and he said, Uh, Im sorry. But we dont have jurisdiction over that bar. And immediately, all of the officers who were overhearing what I was reporting started laughing. And the next thing that he said was, You should know better next time to not go there.

And that did it, Mancheno continued. I knew that I was not going to have the protection from the police ... and next time there might not be a light post to save my life.