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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles
In 2017, a German man who goes by the name Marco came across an article in a Berlin newspaper with a photograph of a professor he recognized from childhood. The first thing he noticed was the mans lips. They were thin, almost nonexistent, a trait that Marco had always found repellent. He was surprised to read that the professor, Helmut Kentler, had been one of the most influential sexologists in Germany. The article described a new research report that had investigated what was called the Kentler experiment. Beginning in the late sixties, Kentler had placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the Berlin Senate. In a report submitted to the Senate, in 1988, Kentler had described it as a complete success.
Marco had grown up in foster care, and his foster father had frequently taken him to Kentlers home. Now he was thirty-four, with a one-year-old daughter, and her meals and naps structured his days. After he read the article, he said, I just pushed it aside. I didnt react emotionally. I did what I do every day: nothing, really. I sat around in front of the computer.
Marco looks like a movie starhe is tanned, with a firm jaw, thick dark hair, and a long, symmetrical face. As an adult, he has cried only once. If someone were to die in front of me, I would of course want to help them, but it wouldnt affect me emotionally, he told me. I have a wall, and emotions just hit against it. He lived with his girlfriend, a hairdresser, but they never discussed his childhood. He was unemployed. Once, he tried to work as a mailman, but after a few days he quit, because whenever a stranger made an expression that reminded him of his foster father, an engineer named Fritz Henkel, he had the sensation that he was not actually alive, that his heart had stopped beating, and that the color had drained from the world. When he tried to speak, it felt as if his voice didnt belong to him.
Several months after reading the article, Marco looked up the number for Teresa Nentwig, a young political scientist at the University of Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research, who had written the report on Kentler. He felt both curious and ashamed. When she answered the phone, he identified himself as an affected person. He told her that his foster father had spoken with Kentler on the phone every week. In ways that Marco had never understood, Kentler, a psychologist and a professor of social education at the University of Hannover, had seemed deeply invested in his upbringing.
Nentwig had assumed that Kentlers experiment ended in the nineteen-seventies. But Marco told her he had lived in his foster home until 2003, when he was twenty-one. I was totally shocked, she said. She remembers Marco saying several times, You are the first person Ive toldthis is the first time Ive told my story. As a child, hed taken it for granted that the way he was treated was normal. Such things happen, he told himself. The world is like this: its eat and be eaten. But now, he said, I realized the state has been watching.
A few weeks later, Marco phoned one of his foster brothers, whom he calls Sven. They had lived together in Henkels home for thirteen years. He liked Sven, but felt little connection to him. They had never had a real conversation. He told Sven hed learned that they had been part of an experiment. But Sven seemed unable to process the information. After all those years, we had gotten out of the habit of thinking, Marco said.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles
Bettie
(16,144 posts)those poor kids.
Oh and WTF...
marble falls
(57,460 posts)FBaggins
(26,783 posts)I can't imagine ever putting those words in that order in a sentence.
That's not a "home" - it's a nightmare that takes "grooming" to an insane level.
Hav
(5,969 posts)and work by the author.
This could be a dystopian horror movie. It's depressing thinking about what these people, actual survivors of so much abuse, went through.
Baitball Blogger
(46,776 posts)Are these the kind of experiences that reinforce the belief that the same thing happens here?:
" He believes there is still a pedophile network in Germany, and that those connected to it 'use their political influence to make sure that the network remains under the radar.'"
cinematicdiversions
(1,969 posts)niyad
(113,801 posts)JFC, whoever "approved" that needs to be locked up.
This is beyond sickening..
May all those involved receive everything they deserve.
cate94
(2,816 posts)IronLionZion
(45,623 posts)it is long past time for some legislative reform on research ethics to prevent this sort of thing.
We don't need a study to see that it would ruin the mental health of young kids who would think this is all normal without any control to compare it to. But of course I'm not surprised that they chose minorities and immigrants for this.
It's an absurd premise to see if people who don't repress their sexual urges won't become nazis.
Chalco
(1,311 posts)Two Lives was made in Germany and Norway and is about
the fact that after the war Germany sent men to Norway
to impregnate women. After the babies were born they were
kidnapped and taken to Germany and raised there. This was
done to increase the German population which had been
depleted by the war.
It is based on real events.
chowder66
(9,100 posts)chowder66
(9,100 posts)I_UndergroundPanther
(12,496 posts)Every pedophile on earth was dead.