Julia (28) experienced ritual violence in Switzerland from the age of 4. She knew nothing about it until the age of 19. Repressed, split off. But then Julia discovered these marks on her abdomen.
How or through whom did you come into contact with ritual abuse?
I began to engage with the topic of sexual abuse, because I noticed that this is what had happened to me. I watched an SRF documentary with Mrs. Krüsi about ritual violence and I saw the scars on the inside of her knees. That instantly frightened me, because I have the same scars. And that’s when I understood that there had been abuse, which somehow had to do with markings and with rituals. I had a couple of conversations with my mom, and she gave us some advice on our way to reflect on yourself and when things are not good, when you feel threatened, or you get aggressive, and you don’t see a connection to the situation, to look into that. I then told her things, for example, while driving, about feelings, emotions … Like if someone drove by too fast, I felt like I wanted to kill him. It was just very strange thoughts and feelings that I had, and I shared this with her. Because of this feeling of being pressured and cornered, we finally got to sexual abuse. She then asked me if anyone had ever touched me, or if I had experienced anything similar. I immediately said, “No! Nothing like that ever happened to me.” I had a good childhood, after all. I would know that, I would know that for sure. I’m sure of that. After that, I went home to my apartment and then my head started spinning. That’s when all the alarms went off and I thought I was going crazy, and it never stopped. Then after two weeks I asked my mom, “How do you know that?” “How do you know if you’ve experienced sexual abuse?” Because my head didn’t stop spinning. She said that one way to know would be if you experience an outburst of very strong emotions, when they break up like from below. After that, I cried heavily. I didn’t know why, it was all black, but it made me cry so much and I realized she was spot-on. Yes, I have scars and marks, also on my abdomen. There was just this point where I realized that it all happened. I also have physical symptoms on my skin, which appear over larger areas and are not normal, tissue disorders that occur when the skin was extremely stressed.
Where and in what context did it take place?
It started in kindergarten. Even inside the kindergarten building. During my time in kindergarten I was taken outside of the kindergarten and brought to a farm. Yes, she organized that. She also used violence together with another person from the school service. And I was taken to an old couple on a farm. There were chickens, it was probably a chicken farm. Very bad things happened there. Many different things came to light. Violence, rapes, there were rituals, so they worked with animal blood, and there were also situations in a small cottage, where one was hunted. There were rooms in this house, where you had to serve johns. There were mostly older men. There was a kind of training there. Then I found out from the structures that it was all organized. For example, when it comes to serving johns, a child doesn’t do that easily. It must have been exposed to extreme violence, to be able to do it and just comply.
What are the typical experiences you have had as a victim?
It’s just that it’s too grievous for the human being in its entirety. These are abysses for which humans are not made. I split all this off, so that I can go about my daily life as a normal child. It’s also somehow designed in such a way, that as a child you have a normal everyday personality, that you appear completely normal, and that it’s all like in a black area. I’ve always tried to express it … Little cries for help, again and again. One was a drawing where everything is black, and where I’m chained to a house. That was always pushed away. It’s forbidden to come out. And for it not to come out, you need a lot of violence, which must be inflicted on a person, so that the person doesn’t talk.
What was your worst experience?
There isn’t a single worst experience, but what’s the worst for me is that they managed to finish a construct with a capstone, so that one can be used for their purposes afterwards, — you don’t consciously realize all this — and you were constructed to harm and destroy other people. For me, that’s very hard to process, something I almost can’t deal with. There’s also a lot of stuff that’s done to children. I had to take children out of cages and then lead them on a leash into rooms and I had to help organize the whole thing and see that the child obeyed. Sometimes they walked around like dogs on all fours. Then you have to see that they’re well-behaved and obedient. And that is done in such a way, that you learn to tame children or dogs, who are running around wild. And then you’re brought into this room … and then you have to subdue these children. And that’s how split personalities are created, so that later, for example in a BDSM session, you can tame people … Tame children, or even adults. And that is done on all three levels. BDSM is on all three levels: body, soul, and spirit. These are all certain power relationships that are intertwined, and when you create those split personalities, it’s important to be traumatized in all of these parts, so that, for example, the psychological stress, when there are children running wild on all fours, then the psychological and the spiritual reality is: You have to solve this! You have to subdue them now! The physical part is that you have to use force so that the child obeys or bends or stands as it should.
Finally, do you have a personal concern or message?
Yes, I have. To the people who are watching this now, the viewers, that when you deal with such issues or, as it was in my case, if you talk to a trusted person, maybe about certain troubles, problems, or triggers that you have you collect these pieces like in a jar. Just everything that’s kind of weird or where the inner alarm goes off, or when you get nervous about certain topics, that you collect all that in a jar and look at it with a trusted person and start to talk about it, and with time you start to get a picture of it or notice that such things may have happened to me too. That’s important to me, being attentive and collecting that and not pushing everything away, but to go there and look at it.