Translation of a Danish Newspaper article by Lars Theilmann, Nordjyske Stifttidende, April 21, 2002 Faith, Hope and Hatred
Life: All the time new memories pop up from the childhood of 37-year-old Dorte. They are painful memories, yet they keep coming back
April 17, 2002
Dorte shoves her hands further down into the pockets of her coat.
- Can we leave soon? I’m feeling really bad being here, she says and shakes herself in the cold April wind.
A few hundred yards away at the foot of a long field her childhood home is nestled idyllically between trees. But she only looks towards it for a few moments, then her glance wanders away - across the hills of the beautiful landscape. Dorte turns her back on the farm. We hurry back to the car and leave.
April 16, 2002
The day before the drive in the area where Dorte grew up, I visit Dorte in her home. The family live in a nice red brick house on a peaceful residential street in a small town in North-Western Jutland in Denmark. Dorte opens the door and receives me with a big smile. The living-room is bright and light, but it is obvious that the family moved into the house recently. The place is nicely furnished, but there are not many pictures on the walls.
- As soon as we get the energy for it, we are going to paint the place and polish the floor, says Dorte.
A wine shelf and a small collection of malt whiskies attract extra attention. Dorte smiles again.
- Even if we are Jehovah’s Witnesses, we can still drink spirits. Jesus also made wine, didn’t he.
The house is calm. Dorte’s husband is at work. He has a small window cleaning business. The children are at kindergarten and at school.
- I am really happy about our three boys. But I have always wanted a girl, and when I buy clothes for the boys, I have often discovered that I am looking at girls’ clothes. But the family saying has always been that I could only have boys, Dorte says sarcastically.
Dorte has been going to psychological sessions for two years now, but she insists on getting along without the aid of medication.
- Sometimes I just want to cry and try to remember everything. And although it hurts, it is as if it makes me feel a little better each time. I’ve got rid of the bodily anxiety and the pain that I used to suffer from, and which I was unable to explain.
Dorte is also having a hard time in her congregation. She has been told that she is no longer allowed to talk about the case. Everything has been investigated, and there is nothing to discuss, is the instruction. When she talks about it anyway, she risks disfellowshiping.
- But I cannot stop talking about something, that is so important to me.
Nov. 12, 2001
The person who phoned did not introduce himself, but Dorte could hear immediately that it was her father Henry.
- He talked to me in a sugary voice. He congratulated me with the sale of our house. I was completely speechless. Then I got furious. I yelled into the receiver, who in the world he thought he was, calling me, and then I slammed down the receiver. Afterwards I was feeling wonderful. I rejoiced for days. I haven’t spoken to Henry since then.
Dorte used to see her parents a few times a year, until she broke the contact completely on December 18, 2000.
May 25, 2000
That night became a turning-point in Dorte’s life. She had accepted an invitation to a 20th anniversary reunion party with her classmates from ninth grade. She did not know why she accepted. She had not done so before, but somehow it was important for her to go.
The party turned into a nightmare. Dorte felt weird in the company of her old classmates. It made her mad when they said that they hardly recognized her. And when the others were talking about their schooldays, it suddenly dawned on her that she remembered nothing from her childhood.
The class agreed to meet again for the 25th anniversary.
- But on my way home in the car I thought that I would never ever meet with them again, when it made me feel so lousy. I felt like the most horrible person on Earth, and I had no idea why.
Dorte did not get to feel better over the following months. On the contrary. It was as if she had a black cloud hanging over her life, and it just would not go away.
She was feeling completely confused when the memories started to come back. In the beginning only in short flashes.
- I saw a table covered with white sheets. A person was lying on the table. At first, I thought it was my sister. But the images kept pressing and I suddenly realized that the person lying on that table was me.
Eventually, Dorte got better at working with her repressions and unfurling her memories.
March 26, 1978
The pains set in in the morning. Dorte is alone with Henry. He is uncomfortable about the situation and does not know what to do. He gets several fits of rage as the day goes. Oda is out preaching.
- Her thirteen year old daughter is at home with birth pangs, and she is out teaching other people how to live. That is just too crazy, says Dorte.
Oda gets back around noon. Dorte is in her room. She sleeps a bit in between. In the afternoon she goes down into the living-room. She is puzzled to notice that Henry and Oda have swapped the dining tables, so that the old square table is now in the living-room. Dorte also recalls other details.
- I am wearing a disgusting, yellow sweater. It is the only thing I can stand wearing during the last part of the pregnancy. But Oda tells me to change into a short blouse. So I change into a blue one.
It is evening. Dorte is in the bathroom when the water breaks. She does not know what is happening and starts yelling and screaming. Oda arrives and Dorte tells her what has happened.
- It is just the water that broke. That is quite normal, says Oda and leaves.
Dorte only remembers three or four pushing contractions. She is lying on some old sheets on the square dining table. Oda receives the baby.
- When she catches the baby and holds it in the air, I catch a glimpse of it and see that it is a little girl.
Henry cuts the umbilical cord and Oda places the crying baby on the writing desk next to the table. Then Henry takes the baby up, holds it to his chest and goes out into the kitchen. Then there is silence.
Oda washes Dorte and changes her clothes, and makes Dorte lie down on the couch. Then Oda brings her a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. A little later Dorte can hear her parents having a low-voiced conversation in the kitchen. Then they both come into the living-room to her.
- It is dead. We are not going to talk about this to anyone, says Henry.
It is night and Dorte gets to sleep on the couch in the living-room. She is exhausted and soon falls asleep. But after a couple of hours she wakes up, because she needs to change the sanitary towel.
- I enter the kitchen and open all the cupboards and drawers. I just have to find my little girl. I go completely desperate and run upstairs and into the bedroom where Henry and Oda are sleeping as if nothing has happened. I say: Mum, where is my baby. She looks at me and says: You must have dreamt it. I ask: Then why am I sleeping in the living-room? She answers: Your are ill. You had stomach pains, remember.
Dorte rushes out of the bedroom and runs back downstairs.
The next morning Henry has gone to work when Dorte wakes up. Oda is up already. She does not mention the night’s events in a word. Instead she says:
- Dad says that you are not allowed to play in the silo anymore.
A few weeks later Dorte sees her father come out of the silo with a sack under his arm.
- I am sure that Henry took the baby away that day.
Spring 1978
Shortly after, the house went up for sale although Henry and Oda had been perfectly happy living there until then. Everything was burnt or sold. The square dining table was given in exchange for a camping table.
One of the many things that have been difficult for Dorte, has been to recognize that her parents took a risk that night and put her life at stake.
- They took the risk that I might die with the baby. But I also believe that they had a plan ready, should the situation arise. Then they would have placed me in the wood, and they would have made everyone believe that they new nothing about the pregnancy or about who made me pregnant. And they might have got away with it.
Dorte has told the story so may times that she only breaks down a few times while telling it. Otherwise she seems self-possessed and serene. As long as she sticks to the truth, it cannot go wrong, she thinks.
It has been specially cruel for her to discover that her parents never loved her. But that is a feeling that she is now sharing with her brother and sister, to whom she has built a very close relationship over the last couple of years.
- The three of us did not get anything from home that we can build our lives on. We have to start all over.
Summer 1977In the summer of 1977 - about 6 months before the birth - Dorte was 12. She lived on the farm with Henry and Oda. Her sister of 18 and her brother of 23 had moved away from home.
One day Oda asked Dorte if it has not been a long time since she had her last period. Dorte confirmed. She had been feeling sick for some time, and she knew that she was pregnant.
- Is it Dad, asked Oda.
- Yes, said Dorte.
- It will be OK, said Oda.
- And you bet it was OK. That night Henry fetched me out of bed. He pulled me into the bedroom where he went completely berserk and beat me up with a belt. But Oda tried to protect me. She yelled: It is your fault, Henry. She cannot help it.
But Henry was not listening. When he had spent his fury, Dorte was told to go back to bed.
At a time after some months’ pregnancy Dorte asked what they should do with the baby,
- Leave that to me, said Henry.
Violence and sexIt was no coincidence that Dorte got pregnant. The rape causing the pregnancy was only one out of a long series of abuses that she suffered during her childhood. As she has recalled the abuses she has written them down. The list is still growing. The first 100 situations - one more gross than the other - have been listed a long time ago. The typical abuse had a pattern of violence first and sex afterwards. Dorte does not recall the kisses herself, but her brother saw their father giving Dorte French kisses twice.
In the middle of this living hell, faith was very important to Dorte.
- I could read in the Bible, that you were not to have sex before marriage. So already as a child I knew that what my father was doing to me was wrong. And I was furious with him each time he had done it.
Dorte did try to tell somebody about the abuse once. When the English teacher was giving her a ride to school, Dorte told her that Henry was doing things to her that could make her pregnant. The English teacher told it to the Danish teacher, who passed it on to Oda and Henry. That evening Dorte was beaten up. So she learned to hold her tongue. Today the English teacher maintains that she does not recall the episode. The Danish teacher has passed away.
The pregnancy became a turning point. Henry stopped raping Dorte after the birth, and she was happy when the family moved away from the farm and into a nearby town.
But the nightmare did not end with Dorte’s childhood. In the meantime her sister’s daughter, who is 20 now, has reported Henry to the police for two molestations. Dorte’s sister has also reported him. Both the sister and the niece had repressed the memories, too.
Before Dorte started recalling the childhood, her parents sometimes looked after her sons. At one time the second son told her about a situation where Grandad demanded oral sex of the boy. And the boy knew nothing about the accusations against the grandfather. When the boy refused to do as he said, the grandfather grabbed him by the back of his neck and let him fall to the ground. Drawings made by the eldest boy also suggest that he has suffered molestation by his grandfather.
- I cannot bear the thought that he has been after my children as well. Actually, that is by far the worst.
Dorte finds it hard to accept that Henry will apparently be let off going to court. The cases were dropped due to the insufficiency of the evidence, and there has to be new evidence before the police can open the cases again.
The police never succeeded in finding the body of Dorte’s baby.
At one time last spring the police were digging on the churchyard near the place where Dorte grew up.
A couple of gravediggers had told the police that they had found the body of a baby in 1980, buried a spit below the grass. They had agreed with the vicar that it might be the baby of a woman who had got pregnant out of wedlock, and had decided not to tell anyone about the body.
They put the baby in the bottom of the grave they were digging.
- I really would like to know if it was my little girl, the gravediggers found. But unfortunately it seems that I shall never know.
Lost his titleJehovah’s Witnesses have investigated the allegations themselves and on that basis they have found no reason to disfellowship Henry. But he has lost the title of Elder in Jehovah’s Witnesses. Elders have to be examples to the congregation.
Thereby Henry both is let off a sentence and what would probably be worse for him, namely disfellowshiping from the denomination.
Even though Henry was the father of the little girl, Dorte thinks of the child with love.
- I only think that she was my little girl. Not that she was his daughter. And the good thing about her not being allowed to live is that she was spared a life with Henry and Oda. She would have been Henry’s victim, even if he had let her live after the birth.
Dorte has problems coping with her mother who is 71.
- My mother saw so many things over the years without reacting, and I cannot use a mother like that for anything. But on the other hand I hope that some day she will come forward and tell what Henry did. For he hurt her, too, of course.
Over the last two years, Dorte has hated her father so much and beaten him up so much in her imagination, that she thinks she is getting him out of her system. She never want to see him again. He is 79 years old, and she has decided long ago, that she will not be there at his funeral.
Parents deny everythingHenry and Oda deny everything. They maintain that the accusations of the children and grandchildren are groundless.
- We had a shock. We do not know anything about such things. It makes us sick to think of incest, says Henry Hansen.
He thinks that his son has turned against them because he is no longer a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses. As regards the daughters’ accusations it is Henry’s belief that the daughters believe in what they are telling. Only it is not true, he maintains.
- But it is the psychotherapist that gave them those thoughts. And then it spreads. That is not memories. That is imagination, says the father.
But that impression is not shared by two of Dorte’s classmates.
- When Dorte says it, it is true, says Else Marie Soerig, who still lives in the area.
Else Marie and Dorte used to swap clothes, and Else Marie remembers that Dorte suddenly started dressing differently in the seventh grade. She wore large sweaters and big loose shirts.
- I remember saying to her that she would soon be looking like another girl in our class. A big, stout girl. But after some time she went back to own clothing style again.
Another classmate who wants to remain anonymous, is also sure that Dorte is telling the truth. She confirms that Dorte changed her clothing style in the seventh grade. At that time clothes were a big issue due to the confirmation.
She also remembers that Dorte often shirked the gym classes, and she remembers that Dorte was often very sad during that period. It continued after the school holidays when they started in the eighth grade at another school. They used to accompany each other on their way to school.
- Often she seemed very remote. She would look at me without really seeing me, at sometimes I would notice a tear in the corner of her eye. But she would not tell me what was wrong, recalls the classmate.
April 17, 2002After a visit to the extremely beautifully situated Naesborg churchyard, where Dortes baby daughter may be buried, we are back in the car.
We talk about Dorte’s faith. In spite of what she has gone through, she never lost her faith. Rather on the contrary. And should she be disfellowshipped for telling her story, she will not stop believing.
- I will always believe in Jehovah God. And I will always tell the truth. The Bible says that the truth will make us free, she says.
As a Jehovah’s Witness she believes in the Day of Judgment. And that thought makes her feel comfortable when she is thinking of Henry and Oda.
- I believe that one day God will weed out the evil people and that they will be done for on the Day of Judgment. If I did not believe in that, I would not be able to bear the thought of what has happened in my life.
Facts about Dorte:Dorte is 37 years old
Out of regard for the children she does not want to reveal her last name.
She lives in a town in the North-Western part of Denmark with her husband and their three sons of three, seven and ten.
She is trained as an office clerk and worked for several years at Bang & Olufsen’s headquarters.
She has also worked in her husband’s window cleaning business and she has been on parental leave with the children.
Since 2000 she has been on sick leave. During that period she has taken classes at the local high school.