CHILE: PINOCHET-ERA SECT LEADER PAUL SCHAEFER SENTENCED TO 20 YEARS FOR SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS.
Former Nazi and ally to the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) Paul Schaefer received a 20-year jail sentence in a Chilean court on May 24. The former leader of the compound known as Colonia Dignidad was convicted on charges that he committed abuses against 25 minors in the enclave between 1993 and 1997, and he faces further charges for participating in crimes committed by the secret police.
The judge in Schaefer's case, Talca Appeals Court Judge Hernan Gonzalez, ordered the maximum penalty for 20 charges of "dishonest abuse" of minors and five counts of "sodomy rape" of children, resulting in the 20-year sentence and an order for an indemnification of 770 million pesos (US$1.4 million) to be paid to the victims.
Gonzalez considered the crimes attributed to Schaefer to be proven, and he ruled favorably on the applications for indemnification from lawyers for 11 of the victims, who were ages 7 to 17 at the time of Schaefer's abuses. Gonzalez had closed the indictment phase of the case in August, believing that the investigations into the case had been "exhausted," which allowed him to begin the trial phase of Schaefer's prosecution. The decision concluded 10 years of investigations into abuses committed by Schaefer.
The elderly German emigre was a corporal and medic in the Nazi army during World War II and fled to Chile in 1961 after allegations of abusing minors surfaced in his home country. He fled Chile in the 1990s after accusations came out against him, and he remained on the lam for eight years. Argentine authorities captured and extradited the 84-year-old fugitive to Chile early in 2005 after finding him in a private, gated community in a suburb north of Buenos Aires (see NotiSur, 2005-04-08). Since then he has been detained at the Carcel de Alta Seguridad (CAS) in Santiago. He is also wanted in Germany on child-molestation charges.
Chilean police had raided Colonia Dignidad--now called Villa Baviera--an enclave founded by Schaefer in the early 1960s. Set up on the outskirts of the city of Parral, about 340 km south of Santiago, it was a heavily fortified estate protected by barbed wire, barricades, and hidden cameras. The compound was inhabited by an estimated 300 people, most of them German citizens, who for years had pledged their complete loyalty to Schaefer.
A self-proclaimed "permanent uncle" to his followers, Schaefer was an evangelical cult leader whose sermons were said to often contain a heavy dose of anti-Semitic...
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