How or through whom did you come into contact with ritual abuse?

Because I suffered a brain injury after a car accident, I had to go to the eye hospital in Lausanne for various examinations, and from there I went to the neurology department in Lausanne. I was abused there for medical experiments, medication, I was raped. And that’s how I got in.

What was your worst experience?

There is more than one bad experience. One was when they went into my brain with a hollow needle right at the top of my spine, pulled out cerebrospinal fluid and injected radioactivity. The second was when they did an electromuscologram through the left eye. That was in Basel. They stuck two needles through my left eye into the muscle and the nerve and used electric shocks to see what would happen.

How do you come to speak of organised abuse?

I was raped there together with another woman. We were taken out of our beds at night in the hospital and taken to underground corridors. I became pregnant. I don’t know what happened to the other woman. We tried to talk: to doctors, nurses, lawyers, pastors, priests, the police. They didn’t believe us. “It’s not possible,” they said. I think if you do these experiments with medications, if you do experiments with electric shocks, with a brain puncture, which you don’t usually do, then that material must already be available. It must have already been there when I was abducted into underground passages the second time, when the baby was due to be born, and I brought the child into the world under torture. There must have been something there. You can’t just do that with nothing.

What happened to your child?

They let it live for a few days and then they threw it against the wall in front of my eyes. They beat up the one man who was there and didn’t want that, and me too, and abused me so badly that we were left lying there more dead than alive. They left us there — I don’t know how long — for two days, and then they made this child into sausage in front of me. Later, I came into a room. There was only a trestle standing diagonally. No daylight, a naked light bulb above me, no handle on the door, and I was kept there for between three and four weeks.

What kind of people do things like that?

I don’t know, they didn’t introduce themselves. I once said they were Satanists, but a priest friend of mine told me: “No, that’s a human.” Humans are capable of such things. It depends on who he devotes himself to. I think these things they did are satanic. Nevertheless, I think it’s also possible for people to degenerate like that.

Have you filed a criminal complaint?

No, nobody believed me. After this first experience, which lasted almost three months, in double quarantine with another woman, I had tried to talk. I didn’t have any documents. My fiancé, who worked in care, had them. He was Basque, a Spaniard. He wanted to go to Spain to get the papers. He never came back, he was shot dead. I don’t know by whom. I only found out later. He said, “I will be the father of your child.” I was five months pregnant when I went to visit someone in the hospital — as I had gotten outside in the meantime — who pulled me into a corner and told me that they had shot Mario. I ran away after that, for hours, then sat down somewhere and I had to say “yes” to my child. I had hoped it would be a girl because I thought I might see the rapist in a boy, in his face. But I had to make a decision, and I said a very conscious “yes” and said, “I want you, whether you’re a girl or a boy.” My name as a girl is Andrea Flurina, as a boy Andrea Stephan. I didn’t have to hate, although I still have a rage sometimes, that’s for sure. After this experiment with radioactivity … I think it was grace. It was given to me from above. I was lying alone in a room, feeling really awful, and I said to myself, they’ve done to me what you, God, have forbidden. I will never be the same person again. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I think this sentence saved me from hatred, and I think it was grace or mercy that I received it. I’m not sure I said this in full consciousness, back then in that state.

Would you recognise the crime scene?

Yes, I went there in 2007. I was there with a friend to look. After 29 years in Lausanne. I wanted to know if what I’m saying is true, or do I have a psychiatric illness? I found the barrack we were in because the hospital was being rebuilt, we were in the underground corridors, and I also found the place where I was as a child. The Lausanne University Hospital is on a hill, there are 25 different buildings, with a difference in altitude of probably 50-100 meters, and they are connected by underground passageways. It took me a long time to realize that it was true, until a friend told me that under the old Roche [headquarters of the pharmaceutical company “Roche”] there are seven underground levels. The sixth is with operating rooms and the seventh is with trucks and everything. That’s when I knew it was real.

That means that you didn´t believe yourself anymore!

I had stopped believing myself because everyone was saying, “I don’t believe you.” I had from the beginning. I hadn’t dissociated. I always experienced it 1:1. I tried to talk right from the start. But whatever I said and whoever I said it to, they said, “We’ll send you to the psychiatric ward.” “And there we’ll take you apart.” And I knew that I didn’t want to go to a psychiatric ward. I’ve never been in a psychiatric ward, not even for a day. I clearly wanted it that way. I had repressed the baby thing at some point, because I had these pictures of this mutilated child, where there was simply nothing left, except for one detail, but I don’t want to tell you that, not everyone needs to know that, it’s gruesome enough. I just had to suppress it in order to move on. I didn’t talk about it with my parents, not even with my mother, but I’m sure she knew, because she sometimes made comments. And even if I wasn’t fully aware of it, it was there in my subconscious because I reacted accordingly.

How have you processed your experiences up until now?

Sometimes it’s difficult. Because of what they did, I’m very disabled. I’ve had pain from head to toe ever since. They broke my back, they broke my eyes, my ears. I have a lot of allergies, I’ve had seizures, but I can’t take painkillers. Depending on the situation, it’s difficult to deal with. But I read a sentence by Rachel Hanan who was in a concentration camp. It’s a very important sentence for me. She wrote, “At night I dream of [the infamous Nazi doctor] Mengele, during the day I believe in forgiveness.” I told an ear doctor friend of mine two days ago, you know, I have to fight for forgiveness again and again every day. I can forgive what they did, but certain actions are unforgivable.

Finally, do you have a personal concern or message?

Yes, I have a concern, that victims have the courage to talk. Admittedly, you have to revisit these things, they are very present then, but it still sets you free. That victims learn to overcome the shame of having been victimized. I am one of those victims who did not become a perpetrator. But that these victims who have been turned into perpetrators forgive themselves for becoming perpetrators.