Members of the CONTACTO team were already familiar with the broad outlines of Schaefer’s unusual personal story, but they had to remind themselves of the details. Schaefer, the news team learned, was born in 1921 near the Dutch border in Troisdorf, Germany. At the start of WWII, Schaefer became a medic and served out the war in occupied France.

An evangelical Christian, Schaefer worked briefly as a youth leader for a church, but was fired on suspicion that he had abused some of the boys in his care. So Schaefer took to the road as a minister. He had considerable charisma, and within a few years had attracted several hundred followers and set up a religious commune for war widows and orphans at Siegburg, near Bonn.

In the early 1960s, however, two mothers complained to the German authorities that Schaefer was sexually abusing their sons. Schaefer fled before he could be arrested. His final destination: Chile, where he arrived in 1964 with several hundred men, women, and children who believed in Schaefer and a vision he advertised of an ideal German community.

Colonia Dignidad. At Colonia Dignidad , Schaefer recreated a fantasy version of the German village of his youth.

Fuentes

Residents retained their German citizenship, wore traditional German clothing and everyone, including Chilean children adopted from neighboring communities, spoke German. [1] Colonia Dignidad , on 33,000 acres, became a state within a state. [2] Residents, who had to confess their sins to Schaefer daily, were not allowed outside the Colonia , where they worked long hours without compensation. They owed complete fealty to Schaefer, who regularly sexually abused the young boys living in the colony.

Fuentes