– Children were chastened to remain silent
A sect in the canton of St. Gallen is making headlines with accusations of abuse. The perpetrator and a victim talk regarding their traumatic experience.
The moment when Helga T. decided to leave the sect, and therefore her husband, remained etched in her memory. In tears, she describes, at her home in Thurgau, how her husband at the time came to pick her up in 2002 and took her to a cornfield. In the middle of the field, he ordered her to kneel down. “I thought he was going to kill me, right now,” she recalls, who was then scared to death. “There, in this cornfield, I said to myself: now, I leave it. Because either I die or it’s him.”