TG 1978-84

Patricia Brunklaus came to Tvind at the age of nineteen, in 1977. This bright, young and intelligent Dutch woman thought she was going to join an organisation which really fought for major changes to improve the world, especially for the ones in need in the Third World.   It all ended in a big deception in 1984 and she left the Teachers Group. Up till today she’s fighting feelings being betrayed by the Teachers Group and being used by Amdi Petersen.

By Han Gommeren

‘In my opinion Amdi Petersen is brilliant, a genius, but he is also frantic. He suffers from megalomania.’ Those are the first words to come up in the mind of Patricia Brunklaus, confronted with the name of cult leader Amdi Petersen. The Dutch woman, now 45 years of age, was a member of the Teachers Group for six years and left it in 1984. She first saw Petersen in 1977, at one of the well known acquaintance weekends for new students at a gym in Tvind. At that time she had never heard of Amdi Petersen, nor did she know anything about the Tvind-structure as it was being built by the guru and his inner circle.

‘Suddenly a tall, handsome man entered the gym with a harem of women around him. I kind of liked that, 19 years of age as I was, feeling freedom in the hippie period and aching for a better world. Because I had heard that was what Tvind was all about. And that’s what Amdi always drummed into our mind: we were revolutionaries, fighting for a new world. You never initiated a conversation with him. He did that, he was the leader.’

‘Amdi was an attractive man, tall, dark blond hair and he was quite charming. The question was always which of the women would be his favourites, he always had a harem around him. Many of them must have shared the bed with him. He gave them power. At the same time sex was a taboo in Tvind. None of us was allowed to have a family or a relationship outside the Teachers Group, some of the men even got themselves sterilized. Sometimes couples came into Tvind, but they always were separated and sent to different places to work for Tvind. After I left Tvind the purpose of this became clear to me: if people get intimate they might get to talk with each other what was happening with them. That might make them strong enough to take the decision to leave this cult-like organisation. In this way Amdi Petersen was maintaining absolute power.’

‘From the beginning Tvind has been fighting against society, trying to grow by drawing money out of it. By evading tax.     I was, for example, one of the first foreigners studying in Tvind. To make certain that they wouldn’t miss any governmental subsidy for the schools, they pretended different courses to be one course. In that way not more than one at ten students seemed to come from outside Denmark, which was a condition for public subsidizing. I didn’t really mind this at that time, as I was convinced it was all done for the good cause: working on a new world and helping the poor in the Third World.’

Members of the Teachers Group, like Patricia, worked day and night and had to live from five Danish crowners a day. ‘And even then we needed to have a coupon to to justify our expenses.’ She even recalls the name of the Teachers Group-member who checked them, a financial man now high in the Tvind-hierarchy. ‘We had so little money that after closing time of the local supermarket in the place I lived then we went to the boxes in which the date-expired cheese was dumped. We were often so hungry, the cheese was still possible to be eaten, so we ate it.

Ambitious

As Patricia says she was very ambitious, she wanted to start a Tvind-school for new development workers in Holland. Although Amdi Petersen didn’t like this idea at all, she didn’t give up easily. ‘After long discussions Amdi allowed me and Jan Orbons to write a plan in Denmark for a school in Holland. The first plan he rejected, he agreed with the second one when we spoke about it in hotel La Kolk at Rømø, which at that time recently had been bought by Tvind. When we wanted to leave the room, he said ‘no’ and suddenly opened a window: Jan and I had to leave the room through the window. It was one of his ways of humiliating members of the Teachers Group. Though it were mostly men being humiliated. It was part of the system. Amdi had everything thought out, he must have started planning his empire not long after the founding of Tvind.’

It was 1983. Just before Patricia started with the school in Holland, in Oud-Gastel, a small village in the south-west of the country, she got an unannounced visit from the guru himself and his partner Kirsten Larsen. Patricia explained that the course could be given to the students for just a small amount of money because she was receiving an unemployment benefit. So she figured the students didn’t have to pay her any salary. ‘After all we were working for the benefit of the world, I thought then.’ But this caused rage with Amdi Petersen, she tells. ‘He demanded that the students should pay me and two other members of the Teachers Group a salary. Thirteen of the students left at once, because they were unable to pay for it or did not agree.’ Amdi showed no interest in the students. ‘It was obviously the money, that it was all about.’ Just as her unemployment benefit her salary immediately was put on a bank account of Tvind like the income from all the members of the Teachers Group, following the principle of common economy within Tvind.

It opened Patricia’s eyes more or less. But still she didn’t decide to leave Tvind, even got some more young rebellious Dutch people into the Teachers Group. The Tvind-course ended after one year and then she was sent to Zimbabwe as a development worker. In that period things got too tough for her. ‘I had a relationship with someone, who wrote me letters. But all my letters were opened and then translated into Danish, because a few members of the Teachers Group were suspicious. And so it came clear I had a relationship with someone from outside the Teachers Group. I was interrogated one and a half day without any break about this. That is brainwashing, I should think. And after that one and a half day I decided that it was better to end my relationship, you even get convinced that it is the best. You really want to end the discussion. But some later on, when you get a rest and try to find yourself back again, you think: what am I doing here?’

Her biggest deception came, when Amdi arranged a trip to Sout

Tvind – seen from the inside

By Britta Rasmussen

I joined Tvind in 1976, because I had a very strong desire to do something in order to fight for a better world instead of just sitting around in left wing organisations at the university and just talk about it.

In the western part of Jutland something new and exciting was happening. The people at Tvind were building a gigantic windmill in order to prove that nuclear power should be banned from Denmark. People travelled in old buses from Denmark to Asia, where they learned about the conditions of the poor of the world by living with the poor people of the villages.

I heard about a fantastic offer The Teachers Group had. For 7 months we should learn carpentry/masonry/plumbing etc by building some new school houses at Tvind, because the Travelling Folk High School was expanding quickly in those years. After that we should prepare ourselves for a travel to South East Asia, which lasted 3 months. After returning home we should give lectures and write books about what we had learned. And everything was free. We should only pay with our labour. So I quit my studies, gave away my books and records and joined Tvind, 22 years old.

The world was out of order in 1976 with the always existing threat of a nuclear war, tension between East and West, massacres of innocent civilians, apartheid, dictators and military regimes. At Tvind we identified ourselves with our heroes and comrades of arms, the guerrillas of Basque, Palestine, Southern Africa and South America. By building the schools we supported the fight for freedom for all suppressed people of the world. We were told by the leader of Tvind Mogens Amdi Petersen, that we were “the flowers of all Danish Youth” – we understood that it was essential to keep up the good work.

Alone man could not do anything against all the misery in the world. Our only chance was to join The Teachers Group and together continue to build new schools from which new students could travel to the Third World, see the misery and realise that they too had to do something . The Teachers Group should grow and grow. It was the only way to avoid a gigantic nuclear war, which would destroy all existing life.

During 9 years I worked at Tvind, at first as a student and later as a life long member of The Teachers Group. At first I worked with children from the age of 11/2 to 14 at the Free School at Tvind. The parents of the children were travelling either as students or teachers at The Travelling Folk High School. For 3 months they did not see each other. Later I worked with monkeys, lions, camels and criminal youths at a small zoo Christianshede Mini Zoo close to Silkeborg in Jutland, Denmark After that I was cook at the school Ake Pecha in Virginia, USA, where 40 more or less criminal youths were living.

In The Teachers Group it is not accepted that every man or woman is a unique being, that we all have weak and strong sides, that we are different individuals and all able to get good ideas. In The Teachers Group it was only the plans and ideas of the leader Mogens Amdi Petersen, that were realised.

If an ordinary member of The Teachers Group approached the leader with her own ideas she was insulted and jeered at for trying. Two seconds after the scorned and ridiculed member crept out of the door Amdi Petersen launched the very same idea himself pretending it was his own.

To the ordinary members of the Teachers Group these things are not known – we were let to believe that Amdi Petersen was a genius – that the plans he made were the very best – if they failed it was because of teachers not living up to their best.

As a member of the Teachers Group you are able to perform any job, without any other qualification than being a member of the Teachers group. You are not allowed to say I cannot do it, if you say so it is because you do not give yourself 100 % for the cause. Then you are a lousy comrade. And this you will be told by the leaders in front of a lot of other members of the Teachers Group, so of course you try to do better than your best.

At all times you have to anticipate the moves of your students and if they do get away at 3 o’clock in the morning, steal your neighbour’s car and rob some stores in the nearest town, it is your fault, you did not do your best.

I did not like conflicts and tried to become friends with my students. At all times we worked very hard and just when you were about to reach the goals that you had been told by Amdi Petersen, he changed them, so you had to run even faster.

In the beginning when we had bought the zoo we were told by Amdi Petersen that the zoo was supposed to be a money earning business – like an ordinary zoo. None of the teachers at the zoo knew anything about lions, monkeys, snakes, bears or about running a business, but we tried our best and worked very hard. The fences were old and rusty so many animals ran off and one night somebody had broken the lock of the lion cage. We were told by Amdi to have the lions killed for safety reasons. The zoo was open to the public and in the weekends the students from the other Tvind School came visiting and stayed the weekend. We had to take care of the students while their normal teachers went to Builders Weekend at other Tvind Schools. We were very busy.

But suddenly after two years he apparently changed his mind and sent us 3 Danish students, who could not be placed in normal schools. Now we had to run the zoo and take care of the students, without being educated to either and without being asked if we would like to do it. The leaders bought another house in the village for the students and sent us 7 Swedish Youths who all sniffed glue. They terrorised the other students and the teachers totally. We were all afraid of them. They occupied the first floor of the house and did not want to participate in any program. Nobody ever criticised the leaders for sending so many impossible students to us – it was our fault that it did not work out because we did not work hard enough.

Two or three times during the 9 years I ran off to visit my parents without permission, because I was so tired and had to sleep, but I always returned after a good nights sleep. I was a part of a struggle and would not give in. I thought that some of the leaders were too stupid and thinking too much about the good of conflicts and other Tvind principles, but I still thought the world of Amdi.

At the large meetings of The Teachers Group I managed to keep my head very low and not attract any attention from the leaders. During the years at Tvind I have always kept in touch with my family and visited them with students and alone several times a year. They said to me, that they supported what I was doing as long as I was happy. They visited the schools and were only shown the good sides like all other outsiders. We never told anybody about our problems.

In 1984 I was told by the leader of the school in Virginia that I could not go home and visit my mother who suddenly had discovered that she suffered from breast cancer. I was shocked and shaken. The leaders said that I would leave The Teachers Group if I was allowed to travel to Denmark. It had never crossed my mind – I only wanted to be with my mother.

After a lot of phone calls across the Atlantic Ocean and discussions with the leaders I stole my passport from the office and hitch hiked at 4 o’clock in the morning to Norfolk. When I reached New York I phoned home and my mother wired money for the plane ticket.

At leaving The Teachers Group I was 3 months pregnant with my daughter, but I did not know for sure. If I had waited another day at the school in Virginia I should have gone to the annual medical examinations where they would have discovered the pregnancy. Other teachers at the school were forced to abortion. The members of The Teachers Group could not waste their precious time with having their own children.

My daughter was born in march 1985 and from this moment my life changed completely. She was the most important person in my life. When my daughter was two months old my mother died, but she had been very happy to become a grandmother.

After leaving The Teachers Group I only had my daughter and my family. Of course I missed the nice members of The Teachers Group, but when you have left you are a traitor and they do not know you any more even though you have spent many years together.

First I had to get an education, find new friends, a job. Then I had to find out what had happened in the world in the years I had been gone. We had had all information about the world from Amdi Petersen, because we stopped reading newspapers in 1978, and I realised slowly that we had been deceived. The situation in the world was not like he had told us. He had for instance claimed that the fascists were about to take over the power in Denmark in 1979. We had to go home to our parents and burn all old pictures of former friends and family, so that nobody could trace us if we had to go under ground.

I realised that The Teachers Group is a sect – just like Moon Movement, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology. There is no difference.

In 1994 I started writing down all the stories from my time in The Teachers Group and to reconstruct the years from the letters I had send to my parents, sister and grandmother. It was a great relief to get it all written down – I have probably forgotten the worst things – many friends helped me to correct the language and criticise it and finally a very brave publisher accepted the book.

I can strongly recommend the method of writing down everything, it is very good therapy and others may learn from what you have experienced. If you would like to tell me your story  britta.rasmussen.aarslev@get2net.dk

In 1997 and 1998 a group of former members of The Teachers Group have met with our families. This has been very good, but some former members are still afraid to meet with more than two people and they get sick just thinking about and hearing the name Tvind, because of what they have experienced there. They need help from a professional to get on with their lives.

This is an extract from 82 full pages written in Danish: “13 år under Tvind”

by Else Waale

Tvind from the beginning.

I joined the place Tvind in 1974 in the age of 50 and I left again in 1987. During this 13 years I have seen the place develop from the three schools: The travelling Folk Highschool, The Teaches Training College, and the boardingschool for children from 14-17, to a world wide undertaking with more than 30 schools in Denmark . I don`t know how many abroad. When I joined we were about 50 people working there, and we all shared the same conditions and functioned as a real democracy. (I believed). We were all the kind of people who felt responsible for others, and specially since most of us had been travelling in countries with very bad living conditions for the natives, we knew about the suffering, and we wanted to help making a better world. Exactly those feelings are exploited to the limit everywhere, where Tvind is operating. When they once has got a foot into some place they never let go and hand over the tools to the natives. They want the full and aboslute control, and if they ever get it in a country, it will be as bad as in the Sovjet Union, with a never resting control over everybody.

As a fact, at the time I joined, one had to promise, that it was for life, and that from now on the group decided, what I had to do unconditionally  – individualism was a very bad word. From now on you could own nothing, not money, not time, not yourself.

That was ok with me. I wanted to work for better schools  – that was the first goal. My life got meaning and I had very good comrades rround me. Some years later one could join on a 2 year contract. That would make it easier to sort some out again.

But I was there for good. Very soon I found out, that it was not easy. Because of my age and my not very best health, I had a limited working time. But most of the others was working very hard, for instance with the old buses, and they were always short of time.

But when we had the meetings, they had to participate, and some, with maybe 20 hours hard work behind them.   If someone fall asleep, he had to get on his feet and stand up for the rest of the meeting.  I have seen one of them, more than one time, standing there and then suddenly fall straight to the floor. And then there was shouting at him, demanding that he should take part in the discussion and give some opinion. And he could not.

I did not like it, but thought, it might be necessary, since everybody else seems to find it ok.

Since then I have experienced lots of that kind of meetings, where somone was assaulted with angry words and none to defend her. Also I have been through that several times and afterwards you are worth nothing, and nobody comforts you.

But the positive experiences was still the most.  To see the developing of the children, of which many of them were thrown out of their school for bad behaving, or wanted to leave because they were treated badly and had no self-confidence. To see them grow and bloom and become responsible and social behaving, was a gift. And that was the job done by the very good teachers around them.

And I have seen much of that, since I have been working on boarding schools as a secretary the most of the time.

The children was not the victims.

We were!

Every second weekend all students was going home and all the time we had a good connections with the parents.

But that did not mean, that we were free to do whatever we wanted, unless we were still so enthusiastic, that we just wanted to obey orders.

All these weekends was spent with building new schools, sports halls, swimming pools, whatever.

I hated those weekends, because I did not like to work in a line with hard physical work.

I am too short and could not follow. I liked it the best, when my job was to sew curtains or covers.

In the evenings there was entertaining, and we had good entertainers, not least Amdi himself.

Everybody was hanging around him, listening to him, admiring him.

It is just too much to mention everything, but there two things, which did hurt me very much.

The one thing was, that I was denied to go and see my sick mother. She suffered from Alzheimers, and when I finally saw here, she did not know who I was. At the time I wanted to see her she was more conscious and she suffered. I shall never forget all these teachers standing around me and shouting at me for my demand. We had common summer. The children were home for almost 2 month, and we had important work to do.

The other thing was, that I was forced to burn everything concerning my former life. All the photos and diaries and worst of all – all the letters I wrote to my mother, 100`s of them she had kept from during the world war two, where I was living in Copenhagen and up till now. Today I miss those letters, because there was interesting information in them.

That is part of the politics – you are not allowed to have any kind of private life.

And that is not good enough for a human being.

Oh, yea, I remember another bad thing. It was when in February 1983 I was told, that the ship “Activ” was lost and some of my friends drowned.   They were all teachers and they were on their way home for a meeting. When we were called to those meetings, it was unthinkable not to come, no matter what. If there was a snowstorm, you had to come, there was no excuse for staying away. So they died for it.

Some years I was working in Grindsted, where there was a common place for all accounts for the schools. I now was the secretary for not only one school, but for all the boarding schools, and I had so much to do, that I sometimes worked the whole night through, two times a week. Of course I made faults and some school leaders complained. We had a meeting with Amdi in my office and he told me about the complaints. My excuse was, that I had too much to do. He said no, that is not the reason. I had to be more careful. There was no shouting or anger, just this: I did not have too much to do.

I had a beautiful room, where I worked and slept, with a big screen window out to the nature. I looked out, and there was the snow. I looked out again and it was summer. There was no time for enjoying nature.

But anyway, something happened. A young man came to take over, and to prove, that it could all be done without mistakes. I got something else to do and had still enough. But he could not make it all in time, and then he was locked in, in a room in the basement, his meals was brought to him and he was ordered to stay and continue, until he was up to date.

Then a new idea came up.

The head of the place should distribute all work between us. She sat by one side of a table and one of us at the other side. Both had a microphone and between us was a tape recorder. Then she talked the task into the recorder, and I (for instance) was telling ok and my name in my microphone. Even we could see each other, it was not possible to speak directly.

I went with my task, finished the job and talked it into the tape. And then went to get another task. There was no more the big bunches of work waiting on my desk in the morning.

I had no longer any resposibility to catch up with the time. It was no longer my concern.

And that became awful. I felt more and more like a robot. And one day I could not stand it any more. I broke down and the end of that was, that I went back to Tvind, where I spend the next couple of years, the last year as a teacher for adults in a handcraft school . Something happened here, that made me finally want to get away for good. And so I did.

At last I broke down, and that was of course because I was not wholehearted enough. They would say. What started like real democracy developed to a totalitarianism where nobody doubted who made all decisions. There were directors, inspectors, controllers, control, control and control again, everywhere. I had enough.

I had a mini bycycle, and I took the most important clothes in my rucksack and went through the sanded path behind Tvind to the nearest grocery 2 km away. I ordered a taxi and went to the railway station.

And I gave myself the greatest gift ever: the rest of my life. The right to decide for myself, what to do.

And I owned nothing.

Today I have a very good life, living in a little old house and having everything necessary including access to the Internet

My mother died long before I left Tvind, but I see my sons and my lovely grandchildren.

Every morning I look out into my beautiful garden and think:” Oh what a wonderful morning.”

This is only very short about a long time experience, and if you have questions (once I was the tourist guide on Tvind) just ask:

Else Waale   ewaale@get2net.dk

PS. Of all the people who were in Tvind when I joined, there is only a handful left. Most of us are outside now, and most don`t want to talk about it anymore. We were all followed and sometimes they could talk people back again by promising something. Also I was offered much better conditions, if I would only come back. But that I felt awful. I was not able to say: Give me good conditions and I will forget the injustice against my friends the feeling of slavery, slavery for most and luxury for a few. We know the pattern. The slavery maybe would be at an end for me, but not for all the others. If I said yes to do that, I would feel like a prostitute. One who is for sale. I may be naive, but I am not for sale.

Else Waale

Steen Thomsen was a member of the Teachers’ Group but resigned in 1998, after 26 years with Tvind.   He was head master of Winestead Hall School in England 1991-1998.  He has since written a report to the Danish government, and supplied this affidavit:

An affidavit

given by Steen Thomsen

WITNESS STATEMENT OF STEEN THOMSEN

I, STEEN THOMSEN, of  [address omitted]  Denmark, SAY AS FOLLOWS:

I first heard about the organisation called Tvind in 1971 when I was a student at Aarhus University.   I was a student of political science.   One day I saw an advertisement and on it was written “Do you want to go to India?”. I thought that this sounded interesting and I was fed up with what I was doing at university so I thought I would give it a try.

Consequently I went for a meeting [led by Amdi Peterson].  He was very charismatic. The meeting was to decide about setting up a new kind of training college which, when translated, into English means “Necessary Teacher Training College”.  The college was run by an organisation founded by Peterson. It originally consisted of Peterson and a group of women.

I was excited about this. It looked like a big social opportunity where you would meet many other people of a young age. It was a new thing.

It was also political in a way. At the time I was very upset about what was happening in respect of nuclear power and the war in Vietnam and other political events in those days. I suppose I wanted something to be done about it and I thought that this was an opportunity.

We thought that we would meet various people around the world and learn from them and later start schools in Denmark and provide people with information so that they could also take a stand as political persons and start a different system.

It was never specifically stated that Tvind was political. Those words were not used. But you could definitely say that the organisation was Maoist. Maoist text books were used in the schools at which I taught.

Travel

My first year with Tvind was spent travelling

I went on a bus trip to India to see the conditions of the people in India.  I remember one time I wanted to take photographs of the scenery. So, I stood up and put my head through the skylight of the bus and began to take photographs of the scenery.   I suddenly felt somebody pulling my leg to pull me down and I saw that it was the group leader, Mikala Gottlob. She said “What the hell are you doing? Do you think we have come here to look at nature? We have come here to meet other people. This is a political thing. What the hell are you doing?”

Training

I became one of the first pupils of the Necessary Teacher Training College. I was 24. I started as a trainee teacher. We could take a State approved exam. The [Danish] Government in 1972 approved the teaching house.   (This approval has since been cancelled by the Government).

The first year was used partially for travelling to India.  After our return to Denmark, we worked for three months and saved money to buy houses around the country. Groups of 12 to 15 of us would buy a house where we would stay for the next three months.

Almost for the whole of the second year, we worked saving up money for the education and for Tvind.   We worked in the Danish industry.   A part of this year I spent working in a slaughter house.   We had to learn through working in factories, how to be in the situation of a “parent”.   We were told that we would only be good teachers if we saw society from that perspective.   The fact was, however, that this was meant for radicalising us into true leftist   (read: Tvind Cult people).

The third and the fourth year of our education, most of the time we worked as trainees in Danish schools, whilst in the late afternoons, nights and weekends and school holidays, we studied the same subjects as those studied at normal teacher training colleges full time for four years.

Our four years led in the end to an exam. We had now had quite some teaching practice, but our theoretical achievements I must admit were of a very low standard.   However, we had now got our first part of Amdi Petersen´s training of us all in order for us to learn to live the Tvind way: No private life, no private economy, total loyalty towards our Big Leader, endless work, little sleep.

I then taught in various mainstream schools.   There were, as far as possible, always at least two Tvind teachers from the Necessary Teachers Training College at the same school.   This – I learned later – was arranged in order for Mr Petersen to maintain his control over us, for him to ensure that we stayed loyal and prepared for joining the Teachers’ Group.

Teachers’ group

In [1977], Amdi Peterson telephoned me and invited me to join the teachers’ group.  I was very impressed and flattered that he had rung me.

In 1979 we built an “independent, free, private school” in Denmark. We had to build the school ourselves.

We worked like mad at this school. At weekends we would work at least 16 hours a day and then teach all week. It was meant to keep us together but I mainly see this as a part of controlling us because we were so exhausted.    We did not have time to think for ourselves.

We were permanently exhausted. That was our life. We were expected to devote our entire lives to Tvind.

Extinction of past

In [1978 or 1979] we, the teachers’ group, were told by Peterson to extinguish our past.     We were told that we should go home to wherever we came from, where we had our childhood things and take all those things, especially letters and photographs of our family and ourselves and so on, and burn them.

I had a girlfriend at that time who was also in the organisation.   (We joined Tvind at the same time and came from the same area.)   We had stored our things in the loft at my parents’ farm.

One day we went home to my parents and while they were having a sleep after lunch, we went up into the loft and took all our things and went outside and burned them.   So now my parents have very few pictures of us left.

Family life

We were not encouraged to go to see our families. I would have liked to have spent much more time with my parents and with my sisters. And I also knew that I would have liked to have had a family of my own. But it was almost unthinkable and in reality impossible to have families and have children.

If I broke any of these obligations I would be very unpopular within the organisation.

I have, for example, in a similar way as hundreds of other TG members, tried to be pulled out in front of a common meeting of 100–200 persons. Once Amdi Peterson asked, in front of everyone, “Well, Steen Thomsen, are you really working for the Teachers’ Group? What is going on in your mind since you have not done this or that? Are you thinking of love life, having children, your own little fucking house? Tell us what is going on!”   In such situations it is about one’s entire existence. No-one will assist you. You will face the loss of ALL your so-called friends or comrades if you do not do the right thing in such a situation and in the same split second. So you admit your ”mistakes” even though your inner ego speaks against the lie that is now expressed through your lips.

If you pursued your own thing, family life or other private life you would be considered as very anti-social person who was not working for the same cause. At the end of the day Tvind would come first. You did not air your own doubts about the organisation or your inner wishes for having a family life or anything.

You were not allowed to be close to anyone. Marriage, even within the cult, was discouraged.  My relationship with my girlfriend who joined the organisation with me did not last.  A few families existed within the organisation but they were very few.   I think they could be counted on one hand. And they had a very difficult time.

Communication

Newspapers were forbidden in the organisation. We were forbidden to talk to the press.  This also counted for myself, being the Headmaster of a Tvind school.

We were told to put down as little as possible on paper and not to write letters in case they were intercepted.   About three years ago members were told by Peterson not to use normal public phones and told to use mobile phones, which could not be intercepted.   In the last years communication was mainly done via the Internet.  On Internet communications we used PGP, “Pretty Good Privacy” which had to be decoded every time.

Meetings

At meetings, we were given handouts which were numbered. This was so that Amdi Peterson or whoever was holding the meeting would ensure that every single handout was returned after the meeting. It is partly due to this that I do not have any papers or document to support what I am saying here.

We had [many meetings].   At the meetings we would gather to discuss Tvind policy.   However decisions always had to be unanimous. No votes were taken. If anybody dissented such dissent was ruthlessly crushed. A meeting did not finish until everybody had agreed a decision. There was huge pressure applied to conform with the proposal.   I am now sure that this was a form of thought control.

There was one meeting which took place on an apple plantation at Dangaard, Western Denmark.

At that time, sometime in the late 1970s, a rumour was circulating that somebody had shot at Amdi Peterson. The teachers were very upset and affected by this.   I think that it might have been true or it might have been used just to raise our anxiety.

This extreme paranoia within the teachers’ group was so great that in those days we looked out for bombs under our cars. We were shown how to open letters without triggering an explosive device.

At the meeting at the apple plantation some of us were called into a windowless room.  We were asked  [by Amdi Peterson]  if we would be prepared to kill the person next to us if they should ever leave the Teachers´ Group or act as traitors.   I remember that there was one, a nurse, who said she couldn’t kill another friend so she was kicked out from the room.

Money

We had to give all our money to Tvind.    When I joined the Teachers’ Group I had to sign an undertaking to covenant all my income to the group.

I have not ever seen any accounts for the money which was invested. Peterson said one day that he thought it was best if we did not see them. He said it would be best not to make copy accounts because it would be too difficult for everybody to see them.

When I was a teacher at mainstream schools nearly all my salary went to Tvind.  For about two years I only had 11 pence per day to live on.  Tvind in return gave me some pocket money.  Tvind even provided us with things that we needed for work and home including clothes. In about 1982 we were told by Andy Peterson at the meeting that we should not be seen buying anything from a shop not even a pair of socks and underwear.  For a while, we were given clothes which were made at a Tvind factory in Casablanca. These did not suit any person and did not fit.

Over the years I have given about £300,000 – £400,000 to the organisation.  I also owned a farm which I inherited from my uncle, which I gave to Tvind.    It was worth about £75,000 – £80,000.

Everybody gave their money and their property.

I think that the money which came from selling in the shops was going to foreign aid.   But another part was sold in the countries meant to be the receivers, instead of being donated to them.    The worst, however, is that the main part of the clothes collected from the Humana/UFF containers is sold to Tvind owned companies especially in Eastern Europe, creating hard cash for Tvind.    This is not what the happy donator is told when he or she is putting second hand things into a Humana/UFF container in Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm -I know that money was spent on property and a building in Florida and a luxury ship. The ship was the biggest fibreglass ship in the world and is mainly used to support the luxurious life style of Mr Petersen.

Winestead Hall, Hull

I came to Britain in 1991 as the head teacher of Winestead Hall near Hull.

We gave the impression to outsiders that the school was well run. When it was being inspected on behalf of the charity commission, I only mentioned things that were working. I did not mention all the items which were not. We never admitted to the inspectors that we neither had enough staff nor got the equipment we needed.

We were also told to deny any involvement with Tvind, which was untrue because we were constantly receiving telephone calls and emails from Tvind in Denmark.

I do not know how we managed. There were not enough staff to look after the children. We worked all day and half the night. Sometimes we only had an hour or two sleep. I was the headmaster, but it was also my job to, for example, for example, rinse the sewerage and keep the lousy old boilers running over the night.

Things were never repaired properly. We did not get the equipment that we needed. It was really difficult to get any money for the running of the school. The Tvind board that until 1996 was in charge ensured that the school was exploited as far as possible for the benefit of Tvind. It was also difficult to convince them to spend the money on basic repairs and redecoration. There was very little sports equipment. We were not given sufficient money to fund this. Books were few, and those we had over many years we had donated from local mainstream schools.

Tvind (Amdi Peterson) decided in 1995 that we should lease a number of PCs from Tvind and use a system created at Tvind in Denmark, called The Modern Method of Teaching. This system never worked and was mainly used for promoting the school. Proper advice and teaching given to our very unfortunate students was not given at all. We were totally unable to do so. We were undermanned with very few professional staff, and constantly in the Tvind grip, not leaving us a chance to develop the school as an English school and in the way that our students needed. Certainly, the money (About £50.000 annually per student, paid by local authorities), was not at all used for the benefit of our students.

When the school was being investigated, I was ordered by a leading TG member, Lene Jensen, to burn everything, particularly the CD ROM’s used by Amdi Peterson, enabling him and other top people to control just about any detail at our school. (I never told anybody that, just like any other Tvind headteacher, I had to every weekend answer 330 specific questions about my school from a Tvind produced CD-ROM. My replies were then PGP-encrypted and posted off via E-mail. If anything was considered by the Tvind people in Denmark to be wrong, I was called straight to Denmark. Very frequently, I went by plane to meeting with Mr. Petersen and other leaders, at the expense of the school at Winestead).

School ship

Paul [surname?] was hired to take the children on education cruises. With another teacher he would put them into the boat and go sailing near Scotland.

The boats were poorly maintained and I myself often had to carry out repairs even though I am not qualified to do so.

On one occasion the wheelhouse floor collapsed. The captain, Paul [ ] refused to take the Winestead Viking into the North Sea

The facts and matters in this statement are within my own knowledge and are true or are based on information supplied to me and are true to the best of my knowledge, information and belief.

[Declared] at ………………………………. the ……..th day of …………1999

[Before me], …………………………………………….

FIRST DRAFT: 27 January 1999
Checked, revised & corrected 6 February 2000

Why Steen Thomsen resigned from Tvind

He writes:

My reasons for leaving were many. Most important were

• My school, and other schools in the Tvind cooperation, was destroyed because of Mr.Petersen’s greed. The schools were not any more for the students. They were (and are) money machines
• The total lack of personal freedom. Tvind is a cult, just as much as what we call the Moonies are a cult. As part of the Teachers Group, you do not have the right of speaking or writing, you do not have any private life, you do not have any private possessions. All your life you dedicate to the Cult(Do you think I was a good adviser for a young person, myself sticking in the mud of an extreme, leftist and authoritarian system, the Tvind Cult?)
• The lack of personal friends outside the Cult.
  
• The lack of family life.  (Just about none of the cult members have their own children)

WITNESS

IICD Michigan, TCE, DAPP and Humana in Zambia

June 2009

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by Leah, USA

Hello.

I just returned home from Zambia, from the project TCE DAPP under Humana People to People. I would like to support you in what you are doing to bring down this horrible organization.

I fundraised the money. I and all of my other 11 team mates did that illegally. They had visitor visa or tourism visa, and we never had permits to fundraise in the places we went. They worked in the clothes collection (planet aid) and were paid for that. Some worked in promotions for IICD and were paid for that as well. Very against United States Laws.

I have also heard rumors for other “DI’s” that there is a wood factory, where they burn off “Made in China” and brand on “Made in USA”….

I hate this whole organization. They do nothing for the people they profess to help. I got to Zambia and they had nothing for me to do…so I went out and taught in schools. They had no money to support me in my projects and no money to help the people working in their TCE project. Although they had just been given large amounts of money from the CDC, World Vision, the US government and unicef. If there is any thing I can do to help bring them down, to court or get them out of the US. Please let me know.

I am American. I live in Utah, but I “trained” at the IICD school in Massachusetts  I would feel fine if you used my email and first name.

On my team in Mass, there were 4 Japanese and 6 Brazilians…they all had visas that let them into the US as visitors, tourists…not workers and fundraisers. This is how it is with all 3 schools in the US and for all non-US students.

I will look into the wood factory, but the girl I was talking to said it was some where in Michigan, and look into what happened to the money given..about a week I left UNICEF gave $200,000 in support of Prevention of Mother to Child transmission and the support groups. I know it did not go to that purpose. They have been given none of that money.

Also the CDC supports them and makes visits. To receive the support each field officer has to test 25 people for HIV each week. I know that goal has never been met, so I don’t know what they are doing to keep on receiving money from the CDC.

Please understand that I loved my time in Zambia and I really liked working with the TCE Field officers. They do an amazing job and work so hard, they only have a 1/2 a day off each week and 1 full day every other week, it is Humana that I have a huge problem with. The field officers were given no support and had huge demands on them that could not be met, and the ”office”, or the management of TCE did very little….they made the project look good and got it more money.

All they care about in money and using people to get more money. The people that worked at the TCE office were some of the richest people I met in the town I lived in. The project just bought a car and it has two motorcycles. Wireless internet and each person has a laptop or desk computer. The office people take taxies into town which is a 5 min walk….they throw away money on stupid things.
They have money you can see it. It is just not being spent they way they say they are going to spend it. Like I said, when I got there they had nothing for me to do. They wanted me to type and take photos, and promote the project. But I refused to do that, that was not the reason I went, and not what IICD told me I was going to be doing. So I worked with the field officers and did things myself. But I know many field officers that all they did was sit and do nothing or took photos or made movies that promoted the project.

I kept a blog while I was there and I don’t know how he found it but my project leader had been reading it, and the day that I left he told me to promote the TCE project so more people would come.

Please feel free to use anything I write, but I do ask that you don’t use any profanity, harsh language or exaggerate. Please keep the tone of what I am saying. I do not regret my time in Zambia, I do regret how I got there and that I was a tool for this horrible organization.

Thank you so much,

Leah

Email: lilyseyes3@msn.com

IICD College, Michigan, 2009

full stories index

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In August 2009 Chelsea wrote to Tvind Alert: My name is Chelsea and I am currently a volunteer at IICD Michigan. I’m leaving tomorrow though for many reasons. There are many things wrong here. I was wondering if any volunteer actually sued humana or the IICD. I spent $1,000 and was not told of anything. We asked for more information.

This is her story:

The organization

There is absolutely no organization at IICD and that’s what they use against you. You never know what’s going on so you have to be prepared for everything and if your not its all your fault. We are told we have a task to do that day like “go to the homeless shelter” we are not told what time we’re going, what car we are taking, who has the keys, or what we’re supposed to bring. There is a weekly schedule with the times and names of classes were supposed to go to. But usually these classes never take place, you are lucky if they tell you they are cancelled.

A typical day would go like this:

8:00am Breakfast
8:30am Morning Course
9:30am Morning Chores
10:00am Team Class
1:00pm Lunch
2:00pm Team Class again
6:00pm “Sport”
7:00pm Dinner
8:00pm Some kind of activity

I was scheduled to teach an English class every day at 11:30-1. I would prepare a grammar lesson then 2-3 activities to go along with it. A couple people came the first and second day and it went well and everyone said they loved it and they used the new vocabulary I taught them. Then they just stopped showing up. The room I held my class is was now used by another team. So I switched my class to another room. I had a lesson prepared everyday but no one showed up.

We were expected to make a cooking list and a cleaning list to assign the volunteers. But we were never told who was going to be gone so if we put someone’s name down and they didn’t do their job, it was our fault. Or if we were assigned to a job and were going to be gone all the week we had to find a replacement. There was absolutely no organization in anything.

The management/teachers at IICD

M is in charge of promotions. She sits in the promotions room from eight in the morning till eight or nine at night. She is in charge of the “DA’s” working in promotions and doesn’t do much else. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how the place is run and has to ask T questions.

T is in charge of the accounting at IICD. She teaches most of the morning courses and IICD and is the person you need to ask for any question. Her real name wasn’t T though, her mail came addressed to [another name]

G is from South Africa and was a “teacher” for my team. I say “teacher” because she never actually taught us anything, she never helped us if we had questions, and most days class was cancelled so she could go skype with her African friends. One day she hit her head on the desk and class was cancelled for the next few days as she sat in her room and ate ice cream. She spit her gum out onto a desk and left it there, she would say we volunteered to do things when we didn’t, she assigned presentations for every week on things we already learned then we would never give them because class would be cancelled.

C is from Brazil and was a past volunteer to Africa. She has a boyfriend that lives in Africa and she teaches a team going to Africa.

O is a teacher from Brazil. He wasn’t there the entire time I was there so I don’t really know anything about him.

K is a teacher from Brazil she was a former volunteer in Africa and taught a team going to Brazil.

Our “jobs” at IICD

The very first day of “training” we are forced to pick two jobs. One is for our team and one is for the school. The job descriptions are very long and not detailed. My job was Building Maintenance/Cleaning and Hygiene for the school and our team. So according to the list I was in charge of making sure everyone got to wash their clothes and shower, making sure all the rooms were clean, making the chores list, planning “Building Friday” and “Building Weekends”, shoveling the snow and salting every morning when it snows, making sure all the rooms are at a good temperature, buying all the cleaning and building supplies, fixing anything in the building or around the building that broken and many other things. I was completely overwhelmed by these jobs till I realized that you aren’t actually expected to do these things, they just want someone there to blame when things go bad.

I walked into the kitchen one day about three weeks into the training and was harassed because we didn’t have toilet paper or dish soap. I asked her who was supposed to buy them and she said another volunteer that was out of town was supposed to buy them but because it’s my job I was just supposed to magically know that he was out of town. My teacher actually told me that she had told me last night to go get some. She swore to me that she had for about five minutes until she realized that she meant to, but she didn’t.

I was in charge of one “Building Weekend” M (the person in charge of promotions) gave me a big list of things that needed to be done in all the rooms. She told me just to go buy all the things off the list that we needed then organize all the people. The problem was that after she gave me the list she went to Denmark and didn’t come back till the second day of Building Weekend. So I was left to interpret her papers which was no easy task. Her list consisted of things like “sparkle and paint the brown cuppord, get the tings to fix the lamp, get knots for under the sink and get nuts for under the sink. She said that she would take apart the showers and sinks to see how they worked and get the things to fix them.

I tried to organize the best I could and even asked the other Danish teacher for help, but it was not enough. When M came back nothing was good enough for her, she told me to drill a lock into the wall and clean the bathroom. So while I was doing that she shut off the water to the building because she was working on one of the showers, then told me I had to drop everything and go to the store to get the things to fix the shower because I hadn’t prepared for Building Weekend enough. (Even though the showers were her job!)

After I had finished all of my tasks and discovered mouse poop by my bed (which consisted of two mattresses on the floor) I found a bed in a room that no one was using and switched my mattresses for something that would keep me off the floor and away from mice. Mette came in and yelled at me for doing that then told me that I stole someone’s bed and they wouldn’t have a bed anymore. I tried to explain to her that I just switched out my bed for another one. She informed me that two mattresses on the floor do not make a bed and if I wanted to switch my bed for a real bed I should have taken one from downstairs from one of the rooms that was locked and drug it up the stairs all by myself.

The courses at IICD

All of the morning courses that were taught by T had a slight undertone of pro-communism (Cuba and North Korea) and anti-capitalism (America & Western Europe). We would have classes called “Garden Farming” where we would learn how when Cuba was cut off from the rest of the world they turned to garden farming to survive and their country survived and thrived because they helped each other. Some of the morning courses included propaganda videos like a man in India who helps slaves escape and gets all the little children into schools, and videos on the poverty in Africa. A couple morning courses were on They make you believe that what you’re doing in their school will actually change the world and help people, but in reality it doesn’t.

During one morning course, a volunteer that had just gotten back from Africa was telling about her experience and told us that the training provided at the school did not prepare her for Africa at all. Trine immediately replied that she didn’t prepare herself for Africa. But how are you supposed to train yourself to go to Africa? Isn’t that what the teachers are there for?

The first week in our team classes was called “About IICD” T taught us these lessons. We learned about the DRH movement and about the beginning of the Teacher’s Group and how good and wonderful the Teacher’s Group, Humana and IICD are. At one point she drew circles and connected TG, DAPP, IICD, Humana, Planet Aid, CCTG, CICD etc. So we all knew that they are connected.

The second week I was there was Africa week. We learned how terrible all the white people are and how we caused them all to go into poverty and that’s why we must volunteer and “fight poverty”. We watched many videos on the apartheid in South Africa and one news report on Rwanda where the main focus was how America and the UN knew exactly what was going to happen and they didn’t do anything. When the reality was if they did anything it could be considered an act of war.

The third and fourth week didn’t have a theme, it was just a time for us to prepare for the fundraising. We learned from some videos about how Corporations played a part in the Holocaust.

Another thing, the “language training” does not exist. You can train yourself in the language and they will take responsibility for it, but there is no way that by training at the IICD you will be prepared for anything except for how to fundraise.

Scholarships

If you do not have enough money for the program which is $3,900 tuition plus $300 non-refundable enrollment fee, they offer you a partial scholarship. This means that you come before your program starts for either two or four months depending on if you have a half scholarship or a 75% scholarship and work in “promotions”. Promotions means you are trying to enroll people into the program.

One girl came a couple months early to work in promotions after she had been there for about two weeks they informed her that they needed more people doing the clothes collection in Detroit, she had to leave the next day and wouldn’t be back for two months. She was horrified. Detroit is a very dangerous place, especially for girls.

Fundraising

“The students participate in fundraising for the expenses not covered by the fees. The fundraising quota is based on $ 6,000 average per person in the program. This money remains the property of the institute.”

The above quote is taken directly from the enrollment contract. I briefly read over this before I signed it. I took from this quote that on average people raise $6,000 not that they would have to or they couldn’t go to Africa and would have to stay at IICD longer and fundraise more or just go home. When I asked them what the money was for I was simply told it was so we could go to Africa.
The number one way they fundraise is by going “street fundraising” they go to a specific city or group of nearby cities for 1-3 weeks and find stores to set up boards in front of the store and ask for donations from customers.

Each team going to Africa is expected to go on four or five fundraising trips. I soon learned that the training is not what staying at IICD is about, its about the fundraising. They push fundraising on you so much it is all you do all day and sometimes most of the night. Designing boards, making t-shirts, making name tags, designing cans to hold money was the training.

While going to these cities we use a website called “couch surfing” to find places where we can stay. We do not know these people and they could be ex-murderers and we would have no idea.

While fundraising one volunteer is supposed to go to each location alone. Again, this is the US and the cities are not safe, especially for young girls who are fairly small and don’t speak English.

Strange things

Some strange things I observed during the month I spent there:

Many volunteers did not know exactly what they were getting into when they got there. Some people working in promotions made promises to them that they couldn’t keep. One man came under the impression that he was on full scholarship because that’s what the person working with him told him. M yelled at the man and was irate when she found this out.

I found a plane ticket home for Christmas break that was forty dollars cheaper than the rest so I asked M if it was ok if I left one day early and save $50 and she said no, that would make it so I was away from IICD for almost two weeks and that was not acceptable.

They allow anyone to drive the cars. I told them one day I didn’t feel comfortable driving and I had been in a few accidents and Trine gave me the keys to her car because I needed to go to the atm in town. One guy didn’t have a license and they let him drive and they people they let drive really shouldn’t have been able to drive. They drove on the wrong side of the road when they turned corners, they had no idea about traffic regulations or speed limits, and all of the cars had something wrong with them.

We were given many tasks that were unimportant and urged to stay up to work on them. My teacher told me everyday that because I sleep 7-8 hours a night that was way too much and I need to sleep 4-5 hours a night instead. I should be working on fundraising instead.
We were urged to be entirely emotionally dependent on our team. I was ostracized because I would call my family and not tell my team why I was sad.

I was the only American at IICD Michigan. No one I spoke to in Dowagiac or in Michigan had heard of IICD.

The people working in promotions would ask me how to get more Americans. I told them that they just have to go to schools and give presentations and put up flyers. They told me that the schools wanted too much information and asked me to recruit my friends to come.
No one could tell me exactly what the team going to Brazil was doing. I was told they were “fighting poverty” and “Child Aid” but when I asked for specifics they just handed me a brochure which just tole me the same thing.

A little more about my experience

There were posters in my school for IICD in 2007. i emailed them a little then but then decided that I would go to school. They emailed me July 2009 and immediatley offered me a scholarship so I went.
I was not told before I got there that the enrollment fee was not part of the tuition and that because I was on scholarship the reimbursement schedule did not apply to me.

“If a participant leaves the course before completion the reimbursement schedule for the fee is as follows:

Prior to: Amount reimbursed
14 days into the program $2,400
2 months into the program $1,500
2 weeks before departure $500”

They told me that because I was there a month they spent my $700 on my room and board and training. Yeah right!

The building the our rooms were in were infested with spiders and mice and smelled like urine. It was absolutely disgusting and they never did anything to correct it.

Each room had an air-conditioning system but we were forbidden to use them because they cost too much. In Michigan during the summer it gets over 100 degrees F and is always extremely humid so it was miserable and made the smell even worse.

A week before we went on our first fundraising we were supposed to go to the Homeless Shelter to help out. We went for two days and the rest of my team sat in the car while my teacher ad me were inside working. My team decided that week they didnt like me because I had found enough places for me to go fundraising but not enough for all of them. So they all spoke spanish to each other and refused to speak english to me. So I asked T if I could switch teams because I no longer felt welcome there. She waited two days then finally told me I could switch to the Fight Poverty Brazil team that started in September but I would have to pay $2500 because i would lose my scholarship. Which didnt make any sense because thats not even what the tuition cost is $2500 + $1000 is only $3500, the tuition cost is $3900.

I went to a family I had met from church and spent the weekend while there was a big TG meeting and most of the volunteers were being sent to detroit. They never told my old teacher that I was no longer on the africa team so she kept calling me Monday. While I was at the families house I started researching into IICD and the tg and i found all that information. I confronted T about it and she ignored all of my accusation she even denied Iicd’s connection to the TG! She kept asking me to come back so we could sit down and talk.

Chelsea left IICD in August 2009 after one month. She has filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s office in Michigan.

Chelsea, email: ilivetomakeadifference@gmail.com

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Do you have a story? Tell us.

Posted: 8th September 2009