Germany admits enslaving and abusing a generation of children

[Hannah Bell]

The country agreed yesterday to provide a €120m (£101m) compensation fund for the estimated 30,000 victims who were among the 800,000 children in German foster homes in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Institutions that for decades meted out inhuman treatment – including ritual beatings, periods of solitary confinement, forced labour and sexual assaults – were not youth remand centres or borstals as might be expected, but homes run by nuns and priests in former West Germany's Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as state-run homes.

Der Spiegel magazine, which broke the story of widespread abuse in German foster homes in 2003, concluded that the mistreatment was systematic: "Between 1945 and 1970, the worst educational practices of the Nazi era continued virtually unabated in these barrack like foster homes..."

Forced unpaid labour included ditch digging, turf cutting and being sub-contracted out to construction firms to hump bricks. For adolescent girls, the favourite form of unpaid labour was carried out in laundries, where they had to work for hours washing by hand and ironing.

Gisela Nurthen: 'We were juvenile slave labourers'

Gisela remembers being locked up in solitary confinement at the age of 15 for having the audacity to hum an Elvis Presley song. For two years she worked for 10 hours a day folding sheets and ironing. There was no pay.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-admits-enslaving-and-abusing-a-generation-of-children-2159589.html

[get the red out]

1. I don't care how long it's been

I don't care how long it's been or how old they are, anyone who participated in this should spend the rest of their miserable years on this planet in a prison cell.

[BlueIris]

8. Why waste the space?

Crimes like this are what capital punishment is actually useful for.

[Kolesar]

2. Looks like a "still" from the movie Slaughterhouse Five

Do you know what it's like to dig frozen soil?

PETER WENSIERSKI - Youths digging turf at Diakonie Freistatt, one of the church institutions, near Hannover, in the 1960s

Children were treated quite brutally in the United States between 1945 and 1970, too.

[Hannah Bell]

3. children are still treated brutally in the us. 1/5 grow up in poverty.

[Kolesar]

4. Beatings and torment

I really, really need to stay upbeat. I can be happy for the holidays even if I am a skeptic

[cali]

6. yes, the foster care system sucks in many places

yes, child poverty in this country is shameful, but many, many parent who are poor are good parents, suggesting that all the children who grow up in poverty in this country are treated brutally, (and in a many commensurate with the photo above, is an insult to a lot of good parents who are poor.

[Hannah Bell]

7. nothing to do with parenting, cali. to do with social conditions.

rates of death by murder, accident, illness -- all highest for poor children.

having the most wonderful parents in the world won't keep you from getting hit by a stray bullet if you live in a community where there are drug gangs on the streets.

just for starters.

it's a social issue, not a parenting issue.

our society creates the conditions that create child abuse in multiple ways.

then we put the kids in prisons & further brutalize them with "tough love"

which includes the same crap as in the article.

[bobbolink]

11. A child is 3 times as likely to be abused in a foster home-TODAY-as in their family of origin

[molly77]

13. During that same time period

Native American children were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools in Canada. This was govt, catholic church and anglican church sponsored. Hundreds of children were sexually assaulted , tortured and murdered by these so called christions. Rev. Kevin Annette has done a lot of work for the Native Americans in Canada.Google him. He was a minister with the Anglican church. When he started exposing the church, he was fired and the anglicans paid for his wife to divorce him.The abuse ended in the 1970s!

[pnorman]

14. I believe there was brutal "reeducation" of Indian children in the USA too.

n/t

[Possumpoint]

5. Not The First Time We've Heard These Stories

Catholic nuns, priests and brothers have been the source of misery for many children. Stories came out of Canada of bad treatment of children, especially those born out of wedlock and raised in Catholic adoption centers. Tales of sexual exploitation of children, especially by the male members of that group continuously come to light. These are the very church leaders who should be doing good in God's name but do the opposite.

In all fairness, this isn't the only religion that has problems with its treatment of children. For these and other reasons I have a deep distrust of organized religion. My belief is that it is built by man not God.

[eilen]

10. My great grandfather was orphaned

He and his brothers were put up for adoption. A farmer up here (Jamesville, NY) adopted him with the purpose of using him as slave labor. He ran away, following the railroad tracks down the state, through NYC to Long Island. I think he went as far as he could go at the time. He ended up a "rum runner" and built his fortune, opened a bicycle shop and grew his family. He had a number of properties at one time. Of course, the depression wiped out a lot of it. He died in his late 50's. I think he also ran numbers but the family does not talk about that.
I really wish he had not died before I was born, I would have loved to talk to him.

[Kolesar]

15. wow, what a story eom

[MiniMe]

9. Did they specify East Germany or West Germany?

I skimmed the article and didn't see it. They were 2 separate countries during that period. I would imagine that it is East Germany that this took place in, but I would like to know for sure.

[ceile]

12. West

"... homes run by nuns and priests in former West Germany's Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as state-run homes."