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Coaching for exit: from a cult's 'property' into a self-determined life

Ökohaus e.V. Rostock, TRAUMAKOMPETENZZENTRUM
A project from Ökohaus e.V. Rostock, TRAUMAKOMPETENZZENTRUM in Rostock, Germany
It takes time/clarity/special expertise to support victims of organised ritual violence. We've all this and want to go on working with 13 adults to find their exit. We need your support to do this while building up basic structures for our project.

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€11,701collected of €75,000
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About this project

Maja Meister from Ökohaus e.V. Rostock, TRAUMAKOMPETENZZENTRUM is responsible for this project
While we are looking forward to some time off, those who seek out our project will go, apparently willingly, to places where well-paying customers can "do anything they want with them": they've been conditioned from birth to endure degrading, painful/deadly sex in forced prostitution, porn or snuff film production - without resisting or even remembering those experiences afterwards.

Cult members split off several parts of child's personality up to their 7th birthday. Every dissociated part then goes through sophisticated training in order to develop the skills the cult needs: some parts are trained for the "normal" world (rule number 1: don't raise any attention), other parts inside the same child will be trained for e.g. sexual services. In organised ritual violence (ORV) trauma mechanisms are used in order to make the victims "function like machines", as long as they are at the cult's mercy, without support, unable to question what is being done to them. The perpetrators are motivated by sadism, hunger for power, (religious) obsession, and/or financial greed.
Amnesia and fear make it impossible for the victims to report these practices to the police.

ICD11 classifies dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly called multiple personality disorder) as a consequence of trauma. The Independent Commission for the Investigation of Sexual Abuse of Children (UBSKM) estimates the victim rate at 1-3%: this would correspond to 800.000 people in Germany, 16.000 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 2.000 in Rostock. (https://www.hilfe-portal-missbrauch.de/en/good-to-know/organised-sexualised-and-ritual-violence).

This region does not have the infrastructure to help those people!

Our project is developing offers aimed at:
  • awareness raising/training for professionals
  • counseling/trauma therapy for people with complex trauma
  • assisting victims who want to leave the cult/get away from ORV.

We have been working for over a year with 13 adult clients, helping them to leave their former lives behind. This work has started as a counseling service/clinic with systemic and trauma therapists, then continued mainly in the form of voluntary work.

We coach our clients while they explore their personality parts:
  • What is trauma from the past, what is violence in the present? How can I myself find out the differences and the truth?
  • What is a lie/manipulation by the cult?
  • Who do I, do we want to be?
During this process, the dissociated parts learn to cooperate effectively in order to gain control, overcome trauma/behaviour conditioned by the cult, fulfill basic needs (sleep/eat/drink/sexuality) without the cult, understand human rights as universal, find answers to the questions of littlest and a fulfilled life.

A long road, made possible by a trusted network of helpers!

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Initiative Transparente Zivilgesellschaft