"The most outrageous thing of all, which disturbs me most about the information which has come in to my office is not the matter of paedophiles in South Australia's parliament but what appears to be the related and organised activities of those paedophiles in high public office—that is, the judiciary, the senior ranks of human services portfolios, some police, and MPs, across the nation, especially within the ranks of the Labor Party."

Former South Australian Speaker of the House Peter Lewis , April 4th 2005 -

"There are a large number, but not a high percentage, of people in high places and positions of trust who take it for granted that they can indulge their sexual appetites for children of both sexes so long as they arrange to cover it up and get away with it,"

"It's a national problem and MPs involved seem to know each other."

Peter Lewis - March 31st 2005

gaiaguys page

Police to review sex assault case

By Gary Hughes - September 12, 2005

VICTORIA'S police corruption watchdog is reviewing the findings of a probe into the handling of child sex abuse claims against a prominent Melbourne radio executive. The original internal investigation by the Office of Police Integrity found that key records relating to the case had disappeared from Victoria Police files.

The OPI agreed to review that investigation after the parents of the young boy allegedly abused complained they were not happy with the way it was conducted and the decision to take no further action over the missing records. The missing records included details of a meeting between the senior sergeant heading the investigation into the original complaint and the radio executive.

The review is believed also to be looking at how the executive was able to tell an associate he would not be charged, despite the police investigation still being under way.

The Age revealed last month that the original OPI internal investigation concluded that the officer in charge of the case could have lied to investigators about the records. The senior sergeant told the OPI the records were lost or stolen from the file early last year.

Allegations the executive had repeatedly abused a boy, aged 3, were first made to the Department of Human Services, which called in police in April 2002.

The abuse was confirmed by the Royal Children's Hospital's Gatehouse Centre, which specialises in dealing with child sexual abuse.

The boy's parents became increasingly concerned at the conduct of the investigation, including attempts by the senior sergeant to deter them from proceeding with the complaint.

File notes on the LEAP computer database show the case was officially closed just two days after the original complaint was made, despite a notation saying that "there may be some foundation to the allegation".

The parents lodged their original complaint with the OPI last December after accessing their son's police file under freedom of information laws and finding "disturbing inconsistencies" and wrong information.

The parents met OPI investigators last month after The Age published their concerns about the internal investigation and the decision to take no further action. They told the OPI they wanted the original police investigation into the executive re-opened and the actions of the senior sergeant investigated.

An OPI spokesman confirmed that the office had been in contact with the parents, but could not comment on the case.

The case is the latest in a string of complaints to the OPI about the way police have allegedly mishandled sexual abuse investigations. - guardster.com

Vic plans child strip search powers

The Victorian Government is under pressure to change draft counter-terrorism laws which could allow children as young as 10 to be strip searched without their parents' knowledge. Under the proposed laws, police would be able to strip search children and intellectually disabled people without having a parent or guardian present if they decide it is not reasonably practical to inform parents.

The president of the Law Institute of Victoria, Cathy Gale, says that is a risky situation.

"It creates the possibility of an abuse of power, on the part of the police, at the expense of society's most vulnerable," she said. Ms Gale says police should only be able strip search children without informing parents in urgent or serious circumstances. "To simply say that you can go ahead and strip search a child without a parent or guardian if it's not reasonably practicable, with no definition of what reasonably practicable means, really gives a very wide and unfettered discretion to the individual police officer," she said.

The head of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, Coleen Claire, says it is hard to imagine a situation that would justify the strip search of a child, without having a guardian present. "It would be such an extraordinary occurrence, anything that requires a child to be handled in any way is likely to be traumatic and would have to be so carefully done," she said.

Ms Claire says a child should only be searched if a third party is present to support them. "They need always to be protected by somebody supportive, so not to have an independent person there to protect their interests and to explain to them what's going on would be quite traumatic."

The Government says the laws are modelled on New South Wales legislation and are still only in draft form. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks says the laws would only be used in extreme circumstances. Mr Bracks says the laws can still be finetuned.

"How would they be used? They'd be used when there was an imminent terrorist attack occurring on our soil, so there can't be anything more dramatic than that," he said.

Shadow Attorney-General Andrew McIntosh says it is a serious error that should have been picked up earlier.

"This Government is either showing contempt for the Parliament, or they're just downright incompetent," he said.

The laws will be debated by Parliament early this year. - abc.net.

Death of accuser seals fate of rape case against G-G

By Peter Gregory and Andrew Stevenson May 24 2003 -

The civil rape case against the Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, was dismissed in the Victorian Supreme Court yesterday after lawyers for his accuser's family conceded it would be virtually impossible to prove the allegation

The family of Rosemarie Anne Jarmyn - the woman who had claimed that Dr Hollingworth raped her at an Anglican Church youth camp in Bendigo in the mid-1960s - decided on Thursday night to abandon their claim.

None of her three sons or her former husband appeared in court. Instead, her counsel, Julian Burnside, QC, conceded that no one was willing to represent the estate and applied for the case to be dismissed.

In the end, a fight her family couldn't bear

By Andrew Stevenson - May 24 2003

For a month the family of Annie Jarmyn have been joined in a spectacular and intense battle with the highest office in the land.

On Thursday night, only hours before Ms Jarmyn's claim that she was raped by the Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, was due back in court, her family conceded defeat.

The battle was not of their choosing. They effectively inherited it with her tragic suicide on April 22. She had made the allegations against Dr Hollingworth in a sworn affidavit. Her death thrust an incredible responsibility upon her three sons and former husband.

Ultimately, despite their wish to honour their mother and have her claims - which included allegations of repeated sexual abuse at the hands of several men - tested in court, the family folded its hand.

Three factors weighed against fighting on.

Family members had been subjected to relentless media scrutiny in a time of grief.

The second, unstated, was the crowded bar table at yesterday's Supreme Court hearing before Justice Bernard Bongiorno. Any attempt to continue the claim would have exposed a family with limited resources to the substantial costs of those defending the action.

The third was the very limited prospect of success.

Outside the court, Ms Jarmyn's solicitor, Simon Morrison, offered no apologies. Instead, he called her decision to initiate her claim an act of "true courage".

"It took many painful months for Annie to tell of her painful past but regardless of her suffering she pressed on," Mr Morrison said. "Faced with denials, Annie did not flinch. She was not deterred. She swore an affidavit and wanted her day in court."

Ms Jarmyn was keenly aware of the impact her allegations would have. As her counsel, Julian Burnside, QC, noted, she had fought to keep the matter confidential. Neither she, nor her family, had had any involvement in the matter becoming "spectacularly public" earlier this month, when the suppression order was lifted, Mr Burnside said. Since her death in Braybrook, Melbourne, Ms Jarmyn's family had been giving the question of fighting on "very anxious thought", he said.

A team of barristers and solicitors had been examining ways to continue the application "in accordance with her family's intentions". "Annie's death did not automatically extinguish her claim but it did create enormous hurdles," Mr Morrison said. "Some could be overcome but most could not due to the death of the most crucial witness."

This meant, as Mr Burnside concurred with Justice Bongiorno, that "as a matter of forensic reality" the allegation could never be proven. But the family could not even be confident of surmounting the first legal hurdle - having Justice Bongiorno waive the six-year statute of limitations. On Thursday night, with uncertain prospects, unwelcome publicity and exposure to the risk of costs, Annie Jarmyn's family reluctantly withdrew. - smh.com

Text of Dr Hollingworth's statement

May 23 2003 - Full text of today's statement by Governor-General Peter Hollingworth after rape allegations were dropped:

"I welcome the dropping of 40-year-old, baseless allegations against me in the Victorian Supreme Court. "The court recognised that I have strongly and unequivocally denied the allegations, which could never be proved and have no legal consequence whatsoever. "The court concluded that I had the right to have the claim against me dismissed immediately.

"I say again, I did not know Ms Jarmyn. I did not attend the camp at which she alleges the rape occurred. I did not rape Ms Jarmyn. I did not sexually assault her.

"While I extend my deepest sympathies to Ms Jarmyn's family on her tragic death, and the great stress under which they have been placed by this, it is nevertheless the case that the allegations she made against me were completely untrue.

"Now that the court has dismissed the claims, I can do no more than swear my innocence under God, just as I would have done before the court under oath had the case proceeded. "Now that this accusation has been disposed of, I am able to give proper consideration to my longer-term tenure in the office of governor-general." - SMH

Much more to come on Surreality TV

May 24 2003 - The tribe has spoken, but this man can't be voted off, writes Mike Seccombe. See the Governor-General, live on Sky TV, deliver his denial of a rape allegation, take by take. Reality TV gets more bizarre every day. The Queen's man is now more or less trapped in Yarralumla, like a contestant in Big Brother, or Survivor, his only interaction with the public via video.

And the big innovation of this reality series: he can't be voted off, although we know 75 per cent of the audience wants it.

But Peter Hollingworth looks defiant rather than humiliated as Sky News picks him up. He stares stonily down the barrel of the camera, awaiting his cue to start. Then he delivers a single sentence, and stares stonily at the camera again. The screen goes black, a still of the Governor-General appears briefly, and then the real man is there again, thin-lipped, awaiting the cue for the next sentence.

There are eight sentences in all; eight grabs, easy for the TV networks to edit. The fourth sentence looks like the one the news bulletins will want.

"I say again, I did not know Ms Jarmyn. I did not attend the camp at which she alleges I raped her. I did not rape her."

And the last sentence is the one which promises more such sur-reality TV to come.

"Now that this accusation has been disposed of, I am able to give proper consideration to my longer-term tenure as Governor-General."

Yes, there will be more, maybe much more. The rape allegation was just a sub-plot.

None of Dr Hollingworth's critics within the church, politics or the media, considered the unlikely, 40-year-old claim by a woman now dead, to be the major issue.

The major issue is that Peter Hollingworth has been found by an Anglican Church inquiry to have allowed a self-confessed pedophile - since jailed for child sex offences to continue as a priest, and to have given misleading evidence about his actions.

Dr Hollingworth apologised for his "error of judgement" after the inquiry report was made public. But now he - and the man who appointed and retains the sole right to vote him off, the Prime Minister, John Howard - claim he was denied natural justice.

Will there be another appearance on Sky to release the legal advice? Who knows? But Dr Hollingworth now communicates with the Queen's loyal subjects only through lawyers, PR men, and video grabs. His message yesterday was recorded at a studio in Canberra, and delivered by a PR man to Parliament House. The tape arrived a bit like a missive from Osama bin Laden.

This, then, is the figurehead of our nation, who must remain hidden from those he represents. This figurehead cannot go out to inspire people like the Queen Mother during the Blitz. He can't represent them like Sir William Deane, who threw sprigs of wattle into that Swiss Gorge where 14 young Australians died.

But he can entertain them on TV. It's a John Howard/Peter Hollingworth joint production, so awful it's compelling. - SMH

Child porn ring called the worst imaginable

By David Humphries and Justin Norrie - March 17, 2006

FOUR Australian men are among 29 people arrested for alleged involvement in what the US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, called "the worst imaginable forms of child pornography".

Internet videos of live molestation were included in thousands of images of child abuse, involving victims as young as 18 months, allegedly revealed in an undercover investigation of a private internet chat room used in the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Britain.

The Australian arrests included a 30-year-old Lake Macquarie man, a 56-year-old man from Mill Park, in Melbourne, and a 22-year-old man from Stafford, in Brisbane. A fourth man, a 38-year-old from Ashgrove, in Brisbane, was arrested yesterday.

An Australian Federal Police agent, Peter Drennan, above, said all Australian charges related to an international peer-to-peer network involving the swapping of child abuse images over the internet. - smh.com.au

UPDATE: Paedophile ex-cop gets three life sentences

Friday, 31st March 2006, 11:27 - LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - A paedophile ex-cop was branded a potential child killer as he was given three life sentences for tying up and sexually abusing young boys.

Gary Mizen, 47, fled to Britain while on bail in Australia for similar offences when he lured a 12-year-old and 13-year-old to his houseboat and plied them with alcohol and trussed them up 'like a turkey' before raping them. Mizen was described in court as a "predatory paedophile" who would groom the youngsters, play sex games with them and gag them to drown out their mufflesd protests. His actions showed "a high degree of sophistication" but only came to light more than a decade later.

In a shocking report presented to Southwark Crown Court a psychiatrist branded Mizen "sadistic". The report said of Mizen: "He has already prgressed to sadistic and controlling behaviour of young males. If there is further progression of deviant and perverse sexual fantasies it might end in a sexual homicide."

Mizen was sentenced to three life terms for raping boys and three years concurrent for indecent assault but will be eligible for parole in just six years. Sentencing him Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: "When presented with an opportunity you groomed these two very young men. Then you indecently assaulted and buggered them. The impact statements make for very sad reading. the only good news is that you pleas of guilty have given the victims a feeling they can start their lives again." He added: "Even though these offences were carried otu a long time ago the effect is so overwhleming that vthe victims cannot bring themselves to talk about it to anyone. There are grounds for believing you pse a serious danger to immature young men for a period that can't be reliably estimated."

The impact of the sex assaults was so great that one of the victims has become heavily dependant on cannabis to try and block out the memories. Mizen was impassive as sentence was passed, but his two victims, now in their early 20s, hugged each other. One of the victims described how he was invited to Mizen's canal boat to help sand and paint it, "a bit like an out-of-school project". The youngster was plied with alcohol during a strip card game and felt so drunk "the room was spinning".

Prosecutor Mark Fenhalls said: "Mizen said 'Do you know what will make you feel better? - a nice fuck will make you feel better'. The child said no but Mizen replied 'Yes, a nice fuck will make you feel better' in an aggressive, really scary way.

"Mizen grabbed his wrists, pinned them back, but the child struggled a bit and was afraid.

"Mizen said 'The more you struggle the more it will fucking hurt'.

"He tied him up using something long, like a dressing gown belt and tied his left wrist to his left ankle, leaving him trussed up like a turkey."

The first victim was groomed with cigarettes and alcohol and encouraged to play strip truth or dare.

The court heard Mizen offered to fix his bike as he cycled along the River Lee, east London, but started tying up the 12-year-old and gagging him with a pair of socks when he complained. The youngster said he was tied up at least three or four times for periods of up to 30 minutes and penetrated eight times.

Mr Fenhalls added: "The child said 'I would be undressed, led into the bedroom, never dragged, but ending up being tied up. "'I never wanted to be tied up and I would be saying I don't want to do nothing sexual. I just wanted to come down to the marina and have a drink and do things that kids do.'"

Mizen's fixation with younger boys stretched back a quarter of a century to 1981 when he was just 22. Mizen, a Briton, resigned from the Western Australian Police Force after being arrested and subsequently serving three years for kidnapping a nine-year-old boy and indecently assaulting him. In March 1990, as a 31-year-old, he gave a 14-year-old alcohol and amyl nitrate before abusing him.

He admitted supplying the youngster with alcohol and drugs but fled back to his native UK to escape the charges. A warrant remains outstanding and the Australian authorities will review whether to extradite him or not. Mizen, of the Far Canal, Springfield Marina, Coppermill Lane, Hackney, admitted two counts of buggery and one count of indecent assault against one child and one charge of buggery against another. The charges relate to incidents betweem April 30 1995 and April 25 1998.

Mr Fenhalls added: "The first attack in 1981 might be described as relatively crude in the sense that he simply abducted a child from the street. "The later offences show a higher degree of sophistication involving significant periods of grooming and corruption and the administration of alcohol and drugs. "The offences and the antecedents demonstrate that the defendant is a predatory paedophile who has been a continuing danger to young boys for a period of many years. "The brutal effect of this behaviour can be seen in the devastating consequences that both young men describe that this defendant's actions have had on their lives."

Brazil has one of the worst child prostitution problems in the world and a thriving sex tourism industry has developed in more impoverished states like Bahia and Amazonas. (Social Security Network, "Brazil spends $1.7 ml on helping child prostitutes"
Reuters, 12 June 1998

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation

"According to the Prosecution Service, of the 114 prostitution houses in the city, 77 offer children from 11 to 17-years-old. Five of them are exclusively dedicated to the sexual exploitation of children, all five of which are owned by foreigners.

A Kenyan mariner told a reporter from the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that Belem is the world's sexual paradise and that you can get a girl of whatever age you want whenever you want.

One experienced worker with Brazilian street children and child prostitutes has complained that the frequent demeaning sexual portrayal of young women and children in the Brazilian media helps create a mindset and culture where the sexual exploitation of such people becomes more acceptable.

In various State Parliamentary Commissions of Enquiry people in high positions including some politicians and judges have been discovered to have been involved in the sexual exploitation of children. "
Child prostitution in Brazil Jubilee action [pdf file]

Child abuse report names Brazil elite

A year-long investigation into child sex abuse has named politicians, judges, priests and business leaders among 200 people who may face criminal prosecutions, Brazil's congress heard on Thursday.

The vice-governor of the state of Amazonas, Omar Aziz, is accused of being a client of a network of prostitution involving 16-year-olds.

A federal deputy, two state deputies and three mayors are among the politicians accused. Five priests and a former athlete are also named.

The report is the result of a national investigation by 11 senators and 11 deputies across party lines. Some cases involve abuse against babies.

Testimony was taken in 22 of Brazil's 27 states.

Maria do Rosario, a lower house deputy, says she will not bow to pressure to remove names from the list. "The pressure is strong but the truth must be free. I have absolute conviction in my principles."

Last month Patricia Saboya, one of the national coordinators of the parliamentary group which looks into child sex abuse, accused the government of doing "practically nothing" to investigate or punish those involved.

The UN estimates that there could be as many as 500,000 Brazilian child victims of sexual abuse.

The commision investigating the abuses called for an overhaul of Brazil's archaic laws. It wants cases which are categorised as "offences against public morals" to be upgraded into "sexual crimes".

Currently there is no law on rape against boys. Also, trafficking of adolscents for sex is only a crime across international borders and not within Brazil itself.

The law could also be changed to initiate public charges for sexual crimes. At the moment prosecution can only go ahead when a private complaint is filed.
Guardian

Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus

Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

aka ''Stop Suffering''

Controverial movement, based in Brazil. The movement also uses the name ''Stop Suffering.'' Promotes word-faith teachings, with a particular emphasis on the seed-faith doctrine. Since its theology and practices are far outside those of normal, biblical Christianity, this movement is considered to be a cult of Christianity.

more at - apologetics index.

Zambia 'Satanic' church ban lifted

A high court in Zambia's capital has ordered the government to let a religious sect accused of practising Satanism resume operating.

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God was banned last month after a series of riots.

Members of the UCKG are now free to meet until the legal case is settled.

The decision temporarily overturns a government decision to de-register the sect and deport its two Brazilian pastors - who can now stay on. They had earlier been given seven days to leave the country. The BBC's Musonda Chibamba in Lusaka said applause and jubilation greeted the ruling.

The church took the government to court shortly after the ban was imposed, saying they had not been allowed to present their side of the story and that they had been the victims of public hatred and persecution.

Several church buildings, including a new cathedral, were damaged in riots after word went round that the church had detained two men against their will for alleged satanic rituals.

In 1998, the UCKG was shut down for what was termed "unchristian practices", but the church took the matter to the Supreme Court, which nullified the ban. - BBC

Chilean police raid German enclave

Police searched properties in Santiago, Bulnes and Parral

Chilean police have raided several properties belonging to a German community whose leaders are suspected of human rights abuses under former military ruler General Augusto Pinochet.

More than 50 officers surrounded the group's enclave near Parral, 350 km (220 milers) south of the capital, Santiago. Agents also searched a conference centre in Santiago and a casino in the southern town of Bulnes, which belong to the German group.

The colony is suspected of killings during General Pinochet's rule

The enclave known as Villa Baviera - formerly Colonia Dignidad - has been raided before on orders of the judge investigating killings which took place during the country's 1973-90 military regime.

Police were also looking for the community's founder, Paul Schaefer, who has been accused of human rights abuses and child sex abuse.

Previous raids

The latest raid on Villa Baviera is part of an ongoing investigation into the group's alleged involvement in human rights abuses. During the latest search, police are said to have examined the documents of the colony's 300 residents.

In a raid carried out in September, police confiscated documents said to contain information about politicians opposed to General Pinochet, human rights organisations and also the military.

Investigators say that the enclave, which used to run its own school and hospital, also had a parallel police institution.

One of the colony's leaders, Gerhard Mucke, was arrested in September.

Mr Mucke, a German citizen, has been accused of being involved in the disappearance in 1974 of a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement, Alvaro Vallejas. Mr Vallejas is said to have been taken by the intelligence services to the enclave, where he was last seen alive. The German community has denied any involvement in the matter.

Controversial past

The community was founded by Paul Schaefer in 1961. Its members live secretively on 13,000 hectares of land close to the mountains.

Although it was a closed community, the group provided a free hospital and school for the area. In the 1980s and 90s horror stories began to emerge about children who attended the boarding school and were never seen by their parents again.

The community's status as a charity and educational foundation was withdrawn in 1991. In 1997, police officers began a series of raids on Colonia Dignidad, mainly to arrest Mr Schaefer who was accused of child sex abuse.

Despite numerous searches and police operations in the area, Mr Schaefer has never been found. - BBC

Former Nazi arrested in Argentina for child abuse

By Jenny Booth, Times Online March 2005

A former Nazi who fled to South America and became the charismatic leader of a religious sect has been arrested in Argentina on charges of child abuse and torture. Paul Schaefer, 83, was seized in the town of Tortuguitas, 18 miles west of Buenos Aires, along with six people described as his security team, Argentine police said. He has been hiding for eight years, ever since a warrant for his arrest on paedophile charges was issued in Chile in August 1996. He was convicted in his absence in November 2004 along with 22 other cult members.

A former corporal and medic in Hitler's army, Mr Schaefer fled Germany to Chile in 1961 to avoid child sexual abuse charges in his homeland. He founded a self-sufficient German enclave called Colonia Dignidad, in the mountains 200 miles south of the Chilean capital, Santiago. Surrounded by barricades, barbed wire and electric fences, he and his flock of German immigrants adhered to a strict discipline and remained cut off from the rest of Chilean life. But the secrets of life in the remote community started to spill out in 1996, when a number of former residents testified that Mr Schaefer systematically abused the colony's young children, many of whom were taken from the parents at birth.

The Chilean authorities also want to question Mr Schaefer in connection with torture during the rule of the right-wing dicatator President Augusto Pinochet, between 1973 and 1990. Investigators say that a number of political prisoners, including Alvaro Vallejos Villagran, a former leftist leader who was arrested by Pinochet agents in May 1974, vanished after being sent to Colonia Dignidad. A former member of Pinochet's secret police has given evidence that he knew Senor Vallejos Villagran was taken alive to Dignidad. Police also want to question Mr Schaefer about the disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler, an American Jewish mathematics professor of Russian origin, in 1985. Investigators believe that Mr Weisfeiler was picked up by a military border patrol while he was backpacking in the region on suspicion of being a spy, and dropped off at Dignidad.

Mr Weisfeiler's sister Olga said that there were reports by Dignidad residents of seeing him alive up to two years later.

The Argentine Police Commissioner, Alejandro Dinisio, said that Mr Schaefer carried no identification documents and refused to speak at the time of his arrest. He added that police had been on his trail for six months. To accelerate Mr Schaefer's arrival to face justice, the Chilean interior minister has asked his Argentine counterpart to kick him out of Argentina immediately, to avoid going to court to ask for an extradition, which could delay the case with appeals. Argentine television reporters mobbed Mr Schaefer as an agent pushed the elderly suspect in his wheelchair into a provincial police station. Officials said that he could be transferred to Buenos Aires today. He appeared on television, handcuffed and smiling, and holding a bottle of fizzy drink.

The arrest "was good reason for which we are all happy," said President Ricardo Lagos of Chile.

Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, hailed the arrest as good news. "His arrest will allow a comprehensive investigation into all the criminal activities in the former Colonia Dignidad to be carried out and punishments to be handed down," Herr Fischer said. "The Chilean and German authorities have charged Schaefer with serious crimes, including false imprisonment and sexual abuse of minors."

Colonia Dignidad still exists, but has been renamed Villa Baviera in a bid to shake off its past. Around 300 people, mainly Germans, still live there. - times online

Secrets of ex-Nazi's Chilean fiefdom

By Becky Branford BBC News

Allegations that Schaefer abused boys were persistently ignored

Paul Schaefer - a former Nazi medic, Baptist preacher and alleged cult leader - has finally been captured in Argentina after eight years on the run. His arrest means he may face trial on outstanding charges of the sexual abuse of young boys in Chile. Mr Schaefer, who is in his 80s, has also been denounced by former followers and by human rights campaigners.

For them, his capture signals the end to decades of impunity for what they allege are his strange and terrible crimes. Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans. But he was charged with sexually abusing two boys - and in 1961 he fled to Chile, reportedly accompanied by some 70 followers.

There, in a lush valley in the Andean foothills, he set up Colonia Dignidad - now renamed Villa Baviera.

Small empire

The colony near the city of Parral, some 350km (220 miles) south of Santiago, grew to about 300 members - mostly German immigrants, or their descendants, but including some Chilean followers. The 137-sq-km (53-sq-mile) Colonia Dignidad boasted a school, a hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and a power station, and reportedly made millions of dollars through a diversified range of businesses, including agriculture, mining and real estate.

It won over local people by offering jobs and free schooling and hospital care.

Details of life in the colony are hard to verify. Some visitors have described a scene from 1930s Germany, with women wearing aprons, with their hair in pigtails, and men in lederhosen. Defenders say the members of the colony may be eccentric, but they are harmless, and in fact do good.

"I know them, and I like them," Otto Dorr Zegers, a prominent Chilean psychiatrist who has worked in the Colonia Dignidad hospital, told the New York Times. "Their ideology is a little bit old-fashioned, like that of the Mennonites who went to the United States, but nothing justifies the co-ordinated, synchronised lies and distortions that have been invented about them."

The names of centres such as Colonia Dignidad... continue to evoke chilling memories in Chile

Amnesty International

But "defectors" from the camp paint a more sinister picture. His accusers say Colonia Dignidad was Mr Schaefer's fiefdom, where he was worshipped as a god. They say residents, who are never allowed beyond the gates of the camp, are kept strictly segregated into genders - so much so that the birth rate of the camp is extremely low. Residents are taught to shun sexual desires - with electric shocks administered to the genitals of young boys, former residents say.

And they accuse Mr Schaefer of the almost daily sexual abuse of young boys. Horror stories have emerged of the young sons of poor local families "disappearing" within the barriers of the compound.

Torture house

But Mr Schaefer's story is not confined to the perimeter fence of the colony - topped with barbed wire, studded with searchlights, and overlooked by a watchtower.

It goes right to the heart of the Chilean state during the iron rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s - a period with which Chileans are still struggling to come to terms today.

Dissidents say they were tortured in bunkers at Colonia Dignidad

The son of Manuel Contreras - the head of Dina, Chile's now-disbanded notorious secret police - has told the Los Angeles Times his father first visited Colonia Dignidad with Gen Pinochet in 1974. He has spoken of the warm relationship that grew between his father and Mr Schaefer.

Former political prisoners of Gen Pinochet have testified to a warren of stone-walled tunnels under the colony, where they were taken to be tortured with electric shocks to the strains of Wagner and Mozart. The Truth and Justice Commission, which investigated human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's rule, backs such allegations.

And despite decades of allegations concerning the sexual abuse of boys within the compound, charges were not filed against Schaefer until 1996 - six years after Chile began its return to democracy.

Thanks to Mr Schaefer's close links with Chile's ruling elite, the colony was able to operate with impunity as a "state within a state", said a Chilean congressional report.

Critics say elements within Chile's ruling establishment would still prefer to keep details of his involvement with Gen Pinochet's government concealed. They say Chile must confront such allegations if it is to complete the process of coming to terms with its past. - bbc.co.uk

New Book on German Sect Says Abuses Were an Open Secret

Inter Press Service News Agency/May 3, 2005 - By María Cecilia Espinosa

Santiago -- The child sexual abuse and other crimes committed in Colonia Dignidad, a farming commune founded in southern Chile by former Nazi medic and Baptist preacher Paul Schaefer, were an open secret, but "nothing was done" about it for decades, according to two young Chilean journalists writing a book on the sect.

Schaefer, who is now 83 and under arrest in Chile, is charged with sexually abusing 26 children.

However, according to new information that has begun to emerge since his arrest in March, the number of young victims could number in the thousands, including not only the sons and daughters of the German immigrants living in the commune, but also the children of local Chilean farming families who attended the Colonia Dignidad agricultural school.

Claudio Salinas and Hans Stange, fifth-year students at the University of Chile School of Journalism, say their months of research clearly demonstrate that all branches of the Chilean state are guilty of omission, which kept Schaefer from being arrested during more than four decades of abuses and human rights violations.

Colonia Dignidad is a wealthy 170,000-hectare agricultural commune founded as a charitable organisation in 1961 east of the town of Parral, around 340 km south of Santiago, by Schaefer and other German immigrants.

In 1991, the name of the secretive enclave was officially changed to Villa Baviera, although it is still known as Colonia Dignidad.

In the paramilitary religious commune, the members' basic liberties, including freedom of expression, association, movement, education and correspondence, have been constantly violated, and sexual abuse against minors was apparently routine.

In addition, during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the commune served as a clandestine torture and detention centre, according to human rights groups.

But testimony from escaped members of the commune was ignored by the authorities for decades.

Stange told IPS that "it was known since 1964 that the members of the commune were being subjected to torture; it was known since 1977 that political prisoners were tortured there; and the child abuse was known about since the 1970s. The state has always known about the human rights violations occurring there."

Although a number of lawsuits were filed against Colonia Dignidad, on different charges ranging from customs and tax fraud to kidnapping and rape of minors, the cases were routinely tossed out on the grounds of lack of evidence.

Schaefer enjoyed the protection of a powerful network, made up of judges, parliamentarians from right-wing opposition parties, former officials of the Pinochet regime, former police and military commanders, and members of the business community who reportedly benefited from the commune's services.

Salinas and Stange began their research in October 2004, with a 10-page report published in the now-defunct magazine Latitud 33, which included an updated map of the commune and a timeline of the most significant events there.

The book-in-progress, which is based on hundreds of hours of research into a wide range of documents and press reports; interviews with key informants, lawyers, former torture victims, escaped former members of the sect and victims' relatives; and visits to Colonia Dignidad, is set to come out in October or November, published by Random House Mondadori.

Stange and Salinas, who both hold university degrees in social communication and have published articles in local magazines and -- in the case of Stange -- in the Santiago newspaper La Nación, describe Colonia Dignidad as "a huge beehive, where Schaefer was the queen bee."

The commune members "were under a spell cast by a leader who is neither a psychopath nor brutish, but a charismatic man, and also a homosexual who only likes boys," said Salinas.

Schaefer "did not allow the commune members to have a private life or freely associate among themselves, and they had to work between 12 and 14 hours a day without talking to anyone," said Stange.

Children were taken away from their mothers at a young age, and raised collectively in same-sex dorms.

By the late 1960s, then senator Patricio Aylwin (who later became president) requested the revocation of Colonia Dignidad's legal status as a tax-exempt charitable organisation. The lower house of parliament also launched an investigation of the commune, but Schaefer was let off the hook.

In 1988, reports by a special investigative judge, Hernán Robert Arias, and the State Defence Council pointed to a number of irregularities, including the fact that adolescent members of the commune were not registered for military service and no information was available on labour conditions in Colonia Dignidad.

Before he came to Chile, Schaefer had already been prosecuted for sexual abuse of minors committed in an orphanage he set up in Germany. "When we talk about omissions, we mean that the state, and all of the authorities, turned a blind eye to the strange things going on in the commune," said Salinas in the interview with IPS.

"Aylwin started to focus on the issue when Colonia Dignidad filed charges in the late 1960s against his friend, Héctor Taricco, governor of the province of Linares, for reopening a public road that had been taken over by the German commune members, who were even charging a toll for use of the road.

"Back then, Aylwin was already seeking the cancellation of the commune's status" as a charitable organisation, said the journalist. Then in the 1970s, "the authoritarian darkness fell, and the direct collusion between the dictatorship and Colonia Dignidad began," he added.

After Chile's return to democracy, then president Aylwin (1990-1994) appointed an investigative commission in the Interior Ministry, which functioned until 2000. Colonia Dignidad lost its status as a charity, and the noose slowly began to close around the commune.

"The lack of concern about this 'state within a state' is the fault" of successive Chilean governments, because Colonia Dignidad has been protected by an extensive network of authorities for many years, said Salinas. "What is incredible are the links in the network, because there is apparently explicit agreement with regard to the commission and cover-up of the commune's crimes," he added.

The two young journalists said they were shocked to find out to what extent the goings-on in Colonia Dignidad were an open secret. "I sometimes wonder why another Colonia Dignidad doesn't exist, if it's so easy to get around the law," said Salinas. "All you have to do is weave networks of cronyism and clientelism."

Before his arrest on Mar. 10 in Argentina and his extradition to Chile, Schaefer was a fugitive from justice, facing charges including child sex abuse.

His arrest, made possible by an international warrant issued by a Chilean judge who is investigating the 1974 forced disappearance of a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), who was last seen at Colonia Dignidad, caught Salinas and Stange off-guard, in the middle of their research.

"We thought everything would go to the dogs, but when we stopped to think about it, we realised it was a good thing, because new information could emerge that we didn't know about yet," said Salinas.

The journalists' concern is focused on the victims: the sexually abused children, the political prisoners who were held at Colonia Dignidad, some of whom were never seen alive again, and the 220 commune members still living there.

"The youngest members can't go anywhere for schooling -- many of them don't even speak Spanish -- or for a job, because all they have ever done is work on the farm," said Salinas. "The commune members are victims, they should be protected, but they are also potential hurdles to a full investigation. They don't fit into our society, or into modern-day German society."

The image of Germany they have is "from the mid-20th century," he added.

Paul Schaefer was born Dec. 4, 1921 in Sieburg, Germany, and joined the Nazi youth movement at a young age. He served as a medic in the German army during WWII, where he reached the rank of corporal. In 1959 he created the Private Social Mission, supposedly a charitable organisation.

He was accused of sexually abusing children in 1959 and fled Germany with his followers. He showed up in Chile in 1961, where the government at the time, led by conservative President Jorge Alessandri, granted him permission to create the Dignidad Beneficent Society on a farm near the town of Parral. - Inter Press Service News Agency report via Rick Ross

German held over 'Chile torture'

A German doctor is in custody after allegedly admitting she tortured a number of children at Colonia Dignidad, a secretive religious colony in Chile.

Gisela Seewald, 75, is said to have told a judge that she gave them electroshock treatment and sedatives. She was ordered to do so by the group's ex-leader, Paul Schaefer, who said they were possessed, she reportedly said.

Mr Schaefer is in jail charged with child abuse and aiding secret police during the 1973-1990 military regime. A former Nazi and Baptist preacher, he established the 13,000-hectare (32,000-acre) colony in southern Chile in 1961, after fleeing Germany to escape child abuse charges.

Five days

It is alleged that the treatments were applied to teenagers who disobeyed adults or showed interest in the opposite sex.

The judge has five days to file charges against Mrs Seewald. Mrs Seewald arrived in Colonia Dignidad in 1963, two years after Mr Schaefer and her husband, Dr Gerd Seewald. She was head of the commune's hospital between 1975 and 1978.

Mr and Mrs Seewald still live in the enclave, now known as Villa Baviera, which was taken over by the Chilean authorities earlier this year.

As well as abuses against the commune's residents - most of whom are believed to have been held there against their will - the judge is investigating the possibility that arms trafficking and human rights abuses took place under Mr Schaefer's leadership. - BBC

Mass grave found in Chile enclave

A Chilean judge is investigating the discovery of an unmarked grave in a German enclave in the south of Chile. Rights groups say the colony's leaders helped with the repression of left-wing activists during military rule. It is thought dozens of bodies were buried at the enclave formerly known as Colonia Dignidad, but later moved. Last year, the state took control of the enclave. Its former head, Paul Schaefer, is in jail charged with child abuse and human rights violations.

'Bodies exhumed'

Judge Jorge Zepeda is expected to inspect the unmarked grave on Tuesday. Experts working at the site say that while they have not found any human remains, they are certain that bodies were buried there and later exhumed, Chilean media reports.

It is believed that in 1978 the bodies were exhumed, cremated and the remains thrown into a river. Investigators have said there could be more unmarked graves in the enclave, where it is believed about 100 left-wing activists were killed.

Paul Schaefer, a former Nazi and Baptist preacher, established the 13,000-hectare (32,000-acre) colony in southern Chile in 1961, after fleeing Germany to escape child abuse charges. Most of the commune's residents are believed to have been held there against their will.

A Chilean congressional report has said that Colonia Dignidad operated as a "state within a state" during General Augusto Pinochet's regime, thanks to Mr Schaefer's close ties to the country's ruling elite. - bbc.co.uk

In an astonishing admission after the disclosure of the cover-up in yesterday's Independent, Tony Blair's official spokesman said MI6 decided not to tell the Hutton inquiry - set up to investigate the death of the government scientist David Kelly - that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons was unsound.

The security services, he said, felt it was "too sensitive'' to be made public. The head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, also decided not to tell Mr Blair. The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr Blair only became aware of the withdrawal of the intelligence as a result of the inquiry by Lord Butler of Brockwell, which was delivered three days ago. -

Independant UK - see Britains Masonic child abuse cult

One fortunate victim that became entangled in the Saudi sex ring was the former Miss USA Shannon Marketic. She had been lured to Saudi Arabia by what she believed was legitimate modeling work. Being a high profile case she was returned to the United States and filed suit. The former Miss USA lost her lawsuit as the State department granted immunity to her abductors.
George Bush, The CIA, Mind Control & Child Abuse Glen Yeadon

Wackenhut, Dyncorp & the privatised stormtrooper abuse rings

"The presence of peacekeepers in Kosovo is fuelling the sexual exploitation of women and encouraging trafficking, according to Amnesty International.

It claims UN and Nato troops in the region are using the trafficked women and girls for sex and some have been involved in trafficking itself. Amnesty says girls as young as 11 from eastern European countries are being sold into the sex slavery. The UN and Nato forces said they had not yet seen the report to comment.
Amnesty's report, entitled "So does that mean I have rights? Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo" was published on Thursday."

Kosovo UN troops 'fuel sex trade'

"In the second half of 1999, 40,000 KFOR troops were deployed and hundreds of UNMIK personnel arrived along with staff from more than 250 international NGOs. Within months of KFOR's arrival, brothels were reported around the military bases occupied by international peace-keepers. Kosovo soon became a major destination country for women trafficked into forced prostitution. A small-scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking predominantly run by organized criminal networks.

Some sectors of the economy grew rapidly, through increased prices paid by international personnel for rented property and services, resulting in an increase in disposable income in certain sections of the population.

By late 1999 the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) had reported on significant organized prostitution in four locations close to major concentrations of KFOR troops. Most of the clients were reported to be members of the international military presence, while some KFOR soldiers were allegedly also involved in the trafficking process itself. Eighteen premises were identified, including in the Gnjilane/Gjilan area, where clients included US military personnel; in Prizren, where users reportedly included German KFOR soldiers and other internationals; in Pej�Pe� where residents reported Italian KFOR soldiers as clients; and in Mitrovic�a, where French KFOR reportedly patronized make-shift brothels.(33)

Since then, there has been an unprecedented escalation in trafficking in Kosovo. From the 18 establishments identified in late 1999, by January 2001, some 75 such premises were listed in the first "off-limits list" issued to UNMIK staff. This listed bars, clubs and restaurants where trafficked women were thought to work, and which had been declared "off-limits" to UNMIK and KFOR personnel (see Chapter 6). By 1 January 2004, there were 200 bars, restaurants and cafes on the "off-limits list".
Kosovo (Serbia and Montenegro) "So does it mean that we have the rights?" Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo amensty international

DR Congo's shameful sex secret

By Kate Holt Eyevine photo agency

Faela is 13 and her son Joseph is just under six months old. Sitting on the dusty ground in Bunia's largest camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP), with Joseph in her arms, she talks about how she ensures that she and her son are fed.

"If I go and see the soldiers at night and sleep with them then they sometimes give me food, maybe a banana or a cake," she explains. "I have to do it with them because there is nobody to care, nobody else to protect Joseph except me. He is all I have and I must look after him."

Lawlessness

It is a story that might not sound out of place in any part of the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo but for one thing, the soldiers Faela is talking about are not the rebel groups who devastated Ituri Province, in north-eastern DR Congo, during the last four-and-a-half years of conflict.

They are part of the UN peacekeeping force, Monuc, and are stationed next to the IDP camp in Bunia on UN orders. Once a thriving trade town, these days Bunia increasingly resembles a frontier town from the Wild West. Its businesses are boarded up, and buildings are half derelict.

The streets are heavily patrolled and everyone scurries home at the first sign of dusk. Gunfire can be heard nightly, usually between Monuc soldiers and local militia groups.

Nightly rapes

It is in this semi-lawless situation that Bunia's IDP camp sprang to life - row upon row of tents, housing 15,000 people, who gathered there seeking UN protection.

"I came to this camp nearly six months ago when the fighting got bad in our village," Faela explains. "Every night the [Congolese militia] soldiers would come to our hut and make my sisters and I do it with them. We had no choice. If we said 'No' then they would hurt us. "Sometimes they put their guns against my chest and sometimes between my legs. I was really scared."

Scared indeed, scared enough to leave the village where she had been born and begin the long walk through the jungle to the IDP camp, knowing she was pregnant by one of the fighters who raped her.

"I had Joseph in the forest," Faela says. "My father cannot help me any more - he is ashamed of me because I had this baby when I am not married."

Faela expected to be safe in the IDP camp, instead she discovered that the shame her father felt had followed her, and in the camp she was shunned and refused food.

Common problem

Faced with starvation and worried for her son, Faela, along with other girls in a similar predicament, turned to the Uruguayan and Moroccan Monuc soldiers stationed directly across from the camp.

"It is easy for us to get to the UN soldiers," Faela explains. "We climb through the fence when it is dark, sometimes once a night, sometimes more."

Nor is Faela the only girl to tell such a story. During a five-day stay in the camp over 30 girls were interviewed, half of whom admitted to crossing the boundary into the UN. They say that they too are unmarried with children and must seek help where they can.

"It is hard to get food sometimes, if you don't have a husband or someone to fight for you," says 15-year-old Maria. "The UN soldiers help girls like me, they give us food and things if we go with them."

Lack of evidence

Dominique McAdams, the head of the UN in Bunia, admitted that there was a problem.

"I have heard rumours on this issue," she said. "It is pretty clear to me that sexual violence is taking place in the camp."

Ms McAdams is not the only member of Monuc to be concerned about the behaviour of their soldiers in Bunia.

Last month the UN announced that it would launch a full investigation into abuse within the camp. Yet the gap between the intention to investigate and the reality of that investigation in Bunia remains large.

"I have requested evidence and proof on this matter, but I have not received anything from anyone," Ms McAdams said.

UN spokesman in New York, Fred Eckhard said: "Monuc is committed to completing a full and thorough investigation into [events at the camp] as a matter of urgency. We will apply all available sanctions against any personnel found responsible."

Part of the difficulty faced by the UN is that the girls involved refuse to give evidence against the soldiers. Extreme sexual violence has been an integral part of the war throughout eastern DR Congo and the girls are terrified of all military, foreign and local officials, making any formal investigation extremely difficult. The names of the girls interviewed have been changed to protect their identities. - BBC

Youth-snatching a growing industry in China

High profits drive abductions

By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times | January 8, 2006

Her parents haven't seen the 6-year-old since they sent her off to school dressed in a black-and-white-checked coat more than two months ago. The school was no help in finding her, they said. The police weren't either, even refusing to fill out a missing person report.

As winter approached, the realization sunk in: Their daughter, the child they had sacrificed everything for, probably joined the thousands of children snatched from their parents each year in China in a burgeoning child-theft racket.

''You can see why someone would want to abduct her. She's so pretty," said her father, Cheng Zhu. ''I just hope, wherever she is, they're taking care of her."

Some of the stolen children are babes in arms. In July, 52 ring members were convicted in the southern region of Guangxi after 28 drugged and bound baby girls, none older than 3 months, were found in nylon duffel bags on a long-distance bus. One died; the rest were taken to an orphanage.

The reasons for the terrible growth industry in child trafficking are as varied as they are disturbing. In a country that earns millions of dollars a year from foreign adoptions, some children end up abroad. Others remain in the country, especially in rural China, where having a son is still seen as a must for inheritance, carrying on the family line, and tending relatives' graves. But girls also are in demand as wives in areas where men significantly outnumber women, as caregivers for older relatives, and for families that already have boys.

In the worst cases, activists and nongovernmental groups say, some are forced to work as prostitutes, maids, or in begging rings.

China often balks at releasing embarrassing statistics, including the number of its youngest citizens abducted in front of schools, on streets, and in busy markets. But specialists say the problem is growing despite repeated efforts by the government to crack down on traffickers. China has disclosed that it rescued 3,488 abducted children last year, according to the official New China News Agency. Specialists say those recovered children are only a fraction of those lost. As the Cheng case suggests, many are not even recorded.

The government has another incentive to downplay the problem: lucrative overseas adoptions. The United States and other Western countries refuse to allow adoptions involving baby-selling.

China has laws against buying babies and strict regulations to prevent children who have been purchased from entering international adoption channels. Nonetheless, the Hengyang orphanage in Hunan Province, which has provided children for US families, was caught recently buying babies.

Officials with the China Center of Adoption Affairs declined to comment, citing rules against speaking with foreign reporters, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs also declined because the case is still under investigation.

''Among the US adoptive community, there's almost a sense of freaking out over this," said Brian Stuy, an American adoption activist who heads the website Research-China.Org. ''Everyone adopts with the idea these are orphans needing a home. Even the hint they have families back in China, that baby-buying may be involved, is a big problem."

The amount of money Chinese orphanages receive for foreign adoptions -- about $3,000 per child -- far outpaces what they receive for a domestic match, creating a big incentive to obtain children legally or illegally and route them into foreign channels, according to a Research-China.Org essay on adoption finances.

Referring to the Hengyang orphanage case, the essay said, ''Given the highly lucrative nature of the international adoption program, the question is not how did this happen, but how come it hasn't happened more often."

Stealing children was virtually unthinkable 25 years ago, when communism was the prevailing ideology and neighborhood minders watched a person's every move. The headlong rush for material wealth has resulted in ''transition problems," as social mores give way to greed, specialists say.

Some children are sold willingly by their parents, in hopes they can have a son under China's one-child policy or for cash. A father in Henan was sentenced to 10 years in jail and a $600 fine in May for selling his infant son for $1,100.

Several other factors drive demand. Buying a boy and ''legalizing" the adoption with bribes often are easier than going through China's formal adoption system. - boston.com