A Never-ending Pain
or
From the Frying Pan to Hell
by Sieglinde W. Alexander

 

The choice a child has against abuse is null. Either it is the frying pan or hell. A child is powerless. Later, as an adult, we continue our life in the same pattern. As we learned early on not to rebel against injustice, we will repeat the pattern as adults and remain silent and blind when abuse is executed somewhere else . The same way we were imprinted to endure our abuse as children, we now accept depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD) and the lifelong flashbacks as our destiny. The planted guilt, shame and blame blinds us just enough, so we will not be able to see the door that leads to mental freedom and healing. Now, we even deny to ourselves our need for wholeness, just as it was denied us to develop into a healthy child. We have a long way to go until we understand the fundamental meaning of what is a human’s right.

The 14 years of my childhood were my private holocaust, stained with fear by the almost daily beatings, sexual abuse, oppression, and child labor. As a 14 year-old, I decided to end the daily terror and for the first time, I ran away from home, although, I did not get very far. The child protection agency sent me back into the hell of my home environment. After having run away six times, I said to these cold-hearted bureaucrats that I would steal or commit murder if they sent me back home again. I believed, at the time, that a prison was a safer place than my parents’ home. The authorities gave in and I was sent instead, to a home for teenage girls in Augsburg.
 
During my stay in Augsburg, I believed I had finally escaped from hell. Six months later, without a word from the child protection agency, I was herded like a domestic animal to another home in Hersbruck. I had no way of knowing that I would be introduced to a new hell, this time a holy hell.
 
The new girls’ home was called Weiher, and was operated by brother Buchta, the only man there and a member of the Lutheran Brothers of Altdorf. In this house of continuously praying, middle-aged, vicious spinsters, who called themselves “the ones without sin,” I became acquainted with other frightening cruelties, oppressions and dehumanizing humiliations. This abuse was new, another ”black pedagogic” one that uses Christ as an excuse to abuse. I learned quickly that I was valued there even less than at home. Punishment, as it was explained, was for the betterment of my character because it was necessary that I become free of sin and worthy of God’s grace.
 
From 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Saturday, we worked, either on the farm, in the laundry, in the sewing/mending department, or we weaved rug-carpets. This labor we did without receiving payment for our toil. After a year, I was allowed to begin a three-year tailoring apprenticeship. We, as tailoring students, received pocket money of 11 DM per month ( about $5.00). With this money we had to buy our soap and toothpaste. What was left had to be saved for the fabric we needed at the end of the three years, to buy fabric for the final exam, where we had to make a dress as the requirement for our final bachelor’s degree.
 
Any rebellious attitude against the inappropriate treatment we received was punished by wearing the “bad girl’s” uniform, which was a blue-white checkered cotton blouse and a blue-white checkered skirt, the mark of the trouble-makers. Normally, our own clothes were locked in a room to which none of us girls had access. Underwear was handed out once a week by our righteous moral guardians. A blouse was worn for 14 days; a skirt for four weeks.
 
The daily routine, morning and evening washing with cold water was supervised by the same frustrated spinsters on duty. The eight girls who stood naked in a cold washroom were watched to make certain that they would wash every part of their body. The sexual leers of the spinsters as they watched every move of the washcloth was the first of many daily embarrassments and humiliations we suffered. Sometimes their hands would stroke down our back in an uncomfortable way, saying, “you forgot to wash some parts.” Strictly controlled warm water showers were only permitted every 4 weeks and only for three minutes at the time. Washing our hair was only permitted every 6 weeks. Everything was supervised and controlled, even how often we could use the bathroom. We had to ask for toilet paper and return the rest of the roll. Other female needs such as the use of sanitary napkins for our monthly period was allowed only once a day, and for no longer than 4 days. If one’s period lasted longer, one had to use toilet paper.
 
The only thing in abundance were the prayers, which we said morning, noon and night. Every Sunday, all obedient girls were allowed to attend church services in the next town of Hersbruck. Divided into four small groups, we walked 2 kilometers one way to the church, no matter if it was raining, snowing or the weather was steaming hot or frigidly cold. This was the only contact we had with the outside world. Under the threat of punishment, it was forbidden to speak with other people on our way to church or at the church.
We were allowed to write letters only to parents and close relatives. The letters were censored. If the contents did not correspond to the house-rules or we complained about the conditions in Weiher, the letter simply vanished without our knowledge. At the time, I asked myself why no one was writing to me. As a 50 year-old, I learned for the first time that my cousin had written many letters to me letters, letters I never received.
 
The meals were sometimes inedible with little nourishment. All of our food was either steamed or boiled. We rarely had meat. Potatoes, in many forms, were on the daily menu. Breakfast was the same every day. It consisted of one slice of stale bread with a teaspoon of marmalade. The mold on the bread was cut away before they served it. Naturally, the food for the administrators of the house was different and better. When, at one Sunday lunch, maggots were crawling out of our waffles in the dessert, I finally reached the end of my endurance and ran away. I was caught, my long hair cut short and dressed in the usual punishment clothing, a blue-white checkered thin cotton skirt with blue-white checkered blouse. I also received a severe beating from the director, Ms. Klose. But there was more to come. For four weeks, I was locked in a small room just under the roof, with a small window, and with only a mattress. It was cold in the night and hot during the day. I had no bed covering, no bed sheets and no pillow. No one was allowed to speak with me and I was neither allowed to read nor write. I received two meals a day, which were brought to me by a holy spinster. She unlocked the door, opened just enough to push my plate with food and one glass of water with her foot into the room. Without saying a word, or even looking at me, she quickly locked the door again.
 
After two weeks in isolation I begun to suffer from depression and thoughts of suicide. In the third week I felt the closeness of insanity, a mental death, the growing gap between my logic and the emotional brain. To occupy myself I begun to measure the room by setting one foot in front of the other and counting the steps or counting the wooden boards of the floor. My second entertainment was cleaning the wall with my fingers. After there where no more unclean spots I begun with moistened the wall plaster with my spit. When the plaster was soft enough I closed the hair splits in the wall with my fingers. Sleeping became a problem. Either, I woke up in fear visualizing a person in my room talking to me, or I could not fall asleep with out rocking my upper body. After these horrifying four weeks I had developed an irrational fear for people and could barely adjust to the group again. For another eight weeks I had to wear the checkered punishment clothing as a reminder of my disobedience.
 
After three years, I finished my bachelor’s license as a tailor and left Weiher as a 19 year-old. I was an emotionally mutilated person with a destroyed identity and feelings of worthlessness, who now had to prove that I was a valuable and fully functioning member of society.

In the 3 years in Weiher, I endured not only the mental and psychic cruelties of my holy educators and their religious system, I was also sexually abused by the older girls. My youth, like my childhood, was an inhuman exposure to trauma that could result only in hate and fury against every abusive and dominating person I was to encounter.

I had learned that I could not expect any empathy from the society in which I lived. For 42 years I was shamefully hiding much resentment, mistrust and internal pain of worthlessness. I could no longer endure the feeling that people were pointing their fingers at me, shaming and blaming me again. What I did not understand at that time, was that it is NOT the child who is the guilty one, but rather the one or ones who had abused the child.

In April 4, 1991, I emigrated into the United States, alone.
I knew no one in the U.S., yet a new country seemed to me to be less of a threat than the country which was called my homeland. A country where respect and integrity is reserved for adults, and children are regarded as private property and child rearing is no more than black pedagogy (Schwarze Pädagogik), - child abuse. It was where I was born, where shame, guilt and worthlessness was imprinted on the soul on so many. 

In 1992 I know it was necessary to begin with my own healing.  I addressed and recognized my dysfunctions and fear, the result of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was the day I began to write my book, which is now on the internet in English and may be read at http://www.boxbook.com The “documentation of my stay at Weiher, together with a detailed explanation of the long lasting effects of child abuse will appear in the extended version of my book. I made this excerpt available in the hope that many others who were in Weiher from 1964 - 1968 will come forward.

 

Comment:
"I have read your piece about your experience in the home for girls. "Absolutely shocking..."
Paddy Doyle, author of "The God Squad": Website: http://www.paddydoyle.com/