They Tried to Tear Our Family Apart

My name is Gudrun. I grew up in a family—my mother was a housewife and took care of us children. My father was a postal clerk.

I worked as a teacher for almost 40 years in public service. As part of this work, I was assigned to a sports boarding school where, for seven years, I was responsible for social and educational supervision. With that, I also supported my husband, as he was the coach of these children and adolescents. One day my husband came home. I said, “Why are you already here? Why are you here so early?” He said, “I’m here for good now.” I was astonished and said, “Why? Are you joking?” “No, they just threw me out.” “Why did they throw you out?” “Yeah, someone told them that I was with Scientology and that would be unacceptable, and now I can either turn in my key and leave, or sign that I have nothing more to do with Scientology. So I left my key and walked away.” The parents of these boarding students were also informed that I was no longer allowed to supervise them. From one day to the next, there was no one left to look after the children. And I really thought it was a bad dream.

During this time, on top of everything else, my parents—or both our parents—threatened us with having the children taken away by the youth welfare office because we were supposedly dangerous parents. What also happened during those nine months was that I got a call from my brother-in-law, “I just wanted to let you know, your parents are planning a family meeting to discuss how to proceed with you, or rather, how your parents will proceed with you. They are planning to buy a deprogramming program from a former Scientologist.” I then asked my brother-in-law what that actually means, “deprogramming.” He said, “Yeah, you get picked up by whomever, parents with children are taken to the Black Forest, to a cabin. And there, things are done to you that undo the brainwashing,” we supposedly received in Scientology. I would never have thought it was possible to end up in such a situation as a completely normal person who goes to work, raises their children to the best of their knowledge, pays their taxes, simply leads a happy life—and then this happens just because you want to improve yourself. And it was simply incomprehensible to me that such a blow could come into our lives and, all of a sudden, try to destroy everything for us. And then we just emigrated.