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paPPa.com-Information:
DER SPIEGEL 45/1997 p. 95 (November 3, 1997)
Child abuse
Just like a Witch-Hunt Trial
How a family therapist in Munich brought fathers into discredit.
(German article)
The addressee of the letter Karl-Heinz Huber* received from his daughter was no longer "Dad", but only "Mr. Father". She doesn't want any "further contacts", the twelve year old wrote last November from the shelter. Therefore he doesn't have to worry his head about Christmas presents. He should just send "280 DM for school books and 90 DM for new shoes".
Frequently Huber, age 54, recalls the time when his family was still intact- when he jointly with his daughter spent a vacation on the North Sea island Borkum, or the three of them - father, mother, child - went on a trip to Freiburg. He has a photograph from this trip. It shows Sabine* in her pink dress, seven years old, how she, arms crossed, the head raised high, looks provokingly into the camera.
But these times are gone. Mrs. Huber accuses her husband to have sexually abused their joint daughter. Huber, on the contrary, feels that he is the victim of a campaign against male violence, defamed as "child abuser''. His wife and a "clique of over-zealous validators'' have made the child "crazy with the allegations of sexual abuse, until the child started believing them". He never harmed Sabine in any way.
The court appointed expert believes the man. There are "no indications for sexual abuse of the daughter by her father". However, "the mother has openly expressed her rejection of the father", thus subjecting Sabine to "strong inner-psychological conflicts". This may have resulted in that Sabine "has adopted the attitudes of her mother as closely as possible".
Huber's problems started when he and his wife saw the family therapist Peter J., age 43, at the Lutheran Counseling Centre in Munich, to consult about their marital problems. The husband expected help from the clerics. Instead, everything became a lot worse.
Twice the Hubers visited the therapist, then the husband was summoned alone. The doctor (J.) began the conversation in an awkward manner. He once had a client, he said, who had committed sexual abuse, which he kept secret, however. Yet when he admitted everything he felt greatly relieved.
Huber was totally consternated and was reminded of the interrogations which Manfred Krug used to carry out as detective in the TV series "Tatort": "It was like the inquisition."
Karl-Heinz Huber was not the sole person who got into the spider lines of the zealous Munich family therapist, and who was accused by the staff of the church operated counseling centre of sexual abuse of his own child.
What was apparently not puzzling to the pastors was: Frequently the allegations of sexual abuse were made by mothers just when the parents were fighting over the custody of the children. Only rarely could the allegedly abused girl make concrete statements regarding the incidents.
Still, the dashing doctor had no scruples to provide "psychological statements". In the case of the five year old daughter of ethnologist Christian Adler, age 51, from Gilching near Munich, he produced his statement, without ever having seen the child or the father.
Adler's Filipino wife alleged sexual abuse by her husband just at the moment the judge was, on the recommendation of a court appointed expert, about to grant sole custody for the daughter to the father. In the court room she all over sudden expressed her surmise that the father had abused the child. An independent expert came then to the conclusion that the child had "not, also not by the father, been sexually abused".
A case for Peter J. He let the mother tell him what the daughter allegedly said and examined two drawings the girl was said to have made. From that he concluded that the girl had "in all probability been sexually abused". In the drawings he had discovered "definitely a phallus in different perspectives".
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He was the sole person who saw a penis. The child itself later explained the drawings: They were supposed to show a girl, her head with long hairs, her back, slender neck and a veil. J. recommended a "preliminary suspension of contacts with the father".
Adler had studied for decades the habits of peoples in Arctica, in South East Asia and in Africa. But for years now he is solely occupied with his own case. Various folders with expert evaluations and statements fill his shelves. On his desk are piles of books on incest and legal matters. Adler is fighting for his daughter.
A total of six expert psychological evaluations have been carried out by now. All exonerate the man. At last he even submitted to a lie detector test by Prof. Udo Undeutsch at Cologne. Also Undeutsch concluded that: "the allegations of sexual abuse of his daughter by Dr. Christian Adler are unfounded".
"Something, however, always sticks", knows Christian Adler. For some time now, the ethnologist is unemployed. "The last job I did not get, because the abuse allegation was not invalidated yet''.
The judges also did not believe the allegations by the mother and the therapist. Still, the mother was awarded custody. Reasoning: This most closely corresponds to the best interests of the child. Adler is only entitled to see his daughter every two weeks. -even she expressed, again and time again, the wish to remain with her father.
Adler has in the meantime brought criminal charges against the judges, just as against Peter J. But the case against the therapist was rested in May because "after all J. himself did not make the abuse allegations, he only interpreted the mother's report".
Adler, at least, was spared one procedure by J. and his coworkers: the "helpers conference". Peter Gerlach*, age 58, has been exposed to this torture. "The meeting", he says, "reminded me of a witch-hunt trial".
What this means to the doctor, according to vizebishop Martin Bogdahn a "clinical psychologist, narrative therapy psychologist and family therapist", Gerlach found out only then.
He was lead into a bare room and had to sit on a chair. In front of him J. and his co-worker Pia B. as "prosecutors", on his side a women from the child protective agency. Then the "validators" led Gerlach's 15 year old daughter into the room, and placed her between the father and the door, such that there was no eye contact between them. Then they read out their allegations.
He had sexually molested his daughter the first time when she was five years old and he ended the abuse when she turned eleven, they proclaimed. At last he allegedly said to the girl: "You already have become a real women now." They would give Gerlach a chance for therapy, they said. This could help him "to admit everything".
Gerlach had also believed he could get help from the supposed family therapists for his family problems. His American wife had sued for divorce.
The family court ordered a careful investigation of the allegations. But also in the case of Gerlach the court appointed psychological expert was unable to find any indications for the alleged abuse. The statements by the girl "regarding the alleged incidents" were "extremely lacking in details": The daughter was unable "to at least recall, respectively report some incidents separately".
What the girl recounted, according to the expert, strongly reminded her of incidents described in the book for adolescents "Good Night, Sugar Baby Doll".
Just like Gerlach's daughter, Sabine Huber too, in the mean time appears to really believe that she was sexually abused, when a child. The father had at one point "in some way touched her thigh" and "embraced her in a strange manner", she told the psychologist. What kind of embrace this was, asked the psychologist. "Well, just in the manner, fathers usually embrace their children."
Sabine, in the meantime, lives in a shelter. She has totally isolated herself and does not want to see her father nor her mother.
Peter J. is not available anymore. After eleven years he has quit his job at the Lutheran Counseling Centre and made off for England.** In Munich, he told his employer, fathers would constantly complain about his work. The past year he "experienced as very violent". This way, he could no longer work in peace.