Disclaimer: I do not own Monster, or Kinderhiem 511. I wouldn't know what to do with the nasty place if someone gave it to me.

The quotes here are all credited to their original sources. I did not say any of that stuff. Scary.

None of the boys are mentioned by name in this story, because at this point, none of them had names. But if you have watched monster, you can probably figure out who is who.

Spoilers for the entire anime.

Warning: Before you begin to read this story, please read this!

I am writing this story simply because it will not stay out of my head. But I must warn you. It is not a nice story, even for me.

It is about Kinderhiem 511. And as we all know, Kinderhiem 511 was no Disneyland.

Since I wrote Achilles, I have always wanted to write something about Kinderhiem. So I did a little research. These are some quotes I found very useful.

I know, I know, just humor me, please? :)

"Can you imagine what kind of people those children would turn out to be when they grew up"

(Erna Tietze Episode 12)

I did some research on brainwashing, and found this lovely gem:

Edward Hunter, author of Brainwashing In Red China, testified in 1958 before a U.S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities:

"Since man began, he has tried to influence other men or women to his way of thinking. There have always been these forms of pressure to change attitudes. We discovered in the past thirty years, a technique to influence, by clinical, hospital procedures, the thinking processes of human beings. Brainwashing is formed out of a set of different elements ... hunger, fatigue, tenseness, threats, violence, and in more intense cases...drugs and hypnotism. No one of these elements alone can be regarded as brain washing, any more than an apple can be called apple pie. Other ingredients have to be added, and a cooking process gone through. So it is with brainwashing..."

Erna's comments in 'Another Monster' were far more revealing:

"It might not be proper to speak this way, since I was involved with all that back then, but it really was dreadful. There were some orphanages that were decent places, but it was the children of anti-government and underground activists, illegal emigrants and criminal offenders... in other words, the children of "dangerous elements," that were sent to special facilities for re-education, even if they were innocent of any wrongdoing. These places were like prisons. The children had no privileges or rights, and they underwent abuse from the administrators day in and day out...

I started right away by asking the question I most wanted to ask.

- And Kinderheim 511 must have been the worst out of all those places you just described.

"Oh, no. Not at all. Kinderheim 511 was... it was a government experiment. Normal orphanages were all under the jurisdiction of the Welfare Ministry. But this one was run by the Internal Department. You know what that means, don't you?"

- The one that was called responsible for the worst atrocities in the communist bloc, either the Internal Department or the National Security Department, correct? The secret police were run by National Security... they set up wiretaps around the country, spied on the citizens, silenced those who threatened them or spoke out for democracy, and used brainwashing to create proper, obedient communists.

"Not only that, they wanted to create soldiers who would act unflinchingly in the name of national interests and ideals, just like cyborgs. That was where Kinderheim 511 came in. Everyone thought they must have been doing something dreadful there, because the fatality rate was so terribly high."

Another Monster.

Hartmann himself had this to say (when he was pretending to be such a nice guy)…

Well, all orphanages in old East Germany were more or less like that. But out of all of them, the special orphanages were just terrible. It wasn't simply a facility to house children who had no one to take care of them. It was a collection of children whose parents were felons, or political criminals caught while seeking asylum. And those whose parents were accused of treason or espionage. So discrimination and inhuman treatment was common practice. Children were unable to complain, no matter what was done to them… Fear and violence dominated the special orphanages. Children from there would not grow up to become normal, responsible adults.

Episode 11.

He would know, wouldn't he?

Oddly enough, their words were corroborated by a certain Mr. Johan Liebert himself, [not his real name, of course :)] in his conversation with Richard Braun:

"Are you familiar with Stefan Joos' Personal history? "

"I think he was in some orphanage in East Germany when he was young."

"I think you ought to know more. This is an extremely important point when discussing him. The orphanage he was in… it was a terrible place. He was really a good kid. But he was treated horribly at the orphanage. And his mind was twisted while he stayed there;

"Article 6 of the Convention on the rights of the child; an Inherent right to live. Guaranteed survival and development. Article 8; the preservation of Identity. Article 19; protection from abuse. No. That Nightmarish place didn't bother giving him those rights. That place was Kinderhiem 511.

Johan Liebert (like you did not already know that :) Episode 29

And he should know, because as unusual as he undoubtedly was, there is evidence that he himself was treated little better than the other inmates of Kinderhiem.

The things he said as a child in a certain tape recording come to mind…

"What I am most afraid of… is that…I'll forget Anna. Because of all these strange experiments done on me every day… my memories are disappearing.

Episode 48

This is even more scary when you remember he was under drugs and being interrogated when he said this.

If that wasn't abuse, I do not know what is.

Even so, I do think he might have had a little immunity from some of the squickier kinds of abuse… at least as soon as they figured out that he was not exactly one of the other boys.

Hartman's (fanatical) opinion of the boy seems to indicate this.

"It's true that Kinderheim 511 was a testing facility; a project for turning orphans into perfect soldiers. Looking back now, that was a meager little experiment too. What about Johan? Him, a soldier? That's Nonsense! He was born to be a leader! He was the one who should have stood at the top! There's no way we could have created a masterpiece like him! He was more than Human, A monster, from the beginning!"

Episode 12

This means that Johan was in Kinderheim with a bunch of military/scientist/coolly fanatical types who were prepared to do all they needed to do to force him to realize what they saw as his true destiny… even if it meant brainwashing him, or eroding his free will, to make him do as they wished.

Make no mistake about it. Even Johan was abused in Kinderhiem . Perhaps in a rather different way from the other boys, but abuse is abuse.

And of course Johan really did not take too kindly to it, as we all know. Generally, he does seem to have a problem with people telling him what to do, or trying to use his little sister to blackmail him into compliance.

Okay. Deep breath. Now here comes the really disgusting part.

Inspector Runge, in his interview in Another Monster made some interesting comments:

- Why do some murderers kill for pleasure? I can understand that people would kill out of hate or vengeance, kill in order to steal valuables, and even in some cases kill in order to obtain food to eat. But to kill a complete stranger for the pleasure of it... this I cannot comprehend.

"It is understandable. You are just not trying hard enough... Indiscriminate killers and lust killers, typically have unfortunate experiences in their childhood years. Usually abuse at the hands of parents or parental figures. Often, they will grow up to commit the same deeds their parents did... these are things that most people can understand. You said that you can understand those who kill out of hate. Those who murder for pleasure commit those murders out of hate for their parents, or those who abused them. Except in these cases, the target for their anger becomes more than any specific person; it will expand to all women, or all children, or all homosexuals."

- That's what I don't understand. They weren't abused by women, or children, or homosexuals. Why do they turn their anger on these people, rather than those who really abused them?

"Anger is an altered form of the desire to control others. They surrender themselves to their anger, to control someone. They don't want revenge against those who abused them. They want to force others to know the same pain that they did, they want to hold the fate of others in their hand, they want to know joy and pleasure. Sexual excitement entwines itself within all of these... and most of these crimes become sexual murders."

- But, wait. Are you saying that it is a combination of hate, desire for control, and sexual agitation that create indiscriminate sexual killers?

"Yes. It is also true that many times the abuse these pleasure killers receive is sexual in nature... At a young age, these people have been controlled and used by their abusers like objects or tools. Even after they grow into adults, they are unable to see others as people capable of similar emotions... pain, agony, humiliation, sadness, fear. They only see animals, like guinea pigs in a science experiment. And the quickest and most effective method to subjugate these animals is sex."

- Why is that?

"The orgasm in sex creates an instantaneous illusion that you are looking down upon yourself from a much higher vantage point, that you are in complete control of your life... It makes you feel almost as if you are a god. Those who have risen to this point can believe that they have total control over their victims."

- How does this advance into murder? Once the goal of sex has been achieved, surely there is no need to kill.

"To control another person is to force your own delusions upon them. Everyone has fantasies about sex that cannot be spoken out loud. The delusions and fantasies of pleasure killers are incredibly cruel and twisted."

- And so an act of reproduction becomes the opposite, an act of murder...

"Humans assign actions that produce pleasure a type of taboo. And I believe that actions people label taboo are in a way, a form of ritual... that give people the illusion of superhuman powers... of complete control over oneself and others... to come closer to God. One is sex. The next is drugs... What do you think the last is?"

- (silence)

"The greatest taboo a human can commit... is murder."

Runge, Another monster.

Frankly, this conversation convinced me of three things.

First, there must have been sexual abuse as well as other kinds of abuse in Kinderheim. There had to have been to produce people like Stephan Joos, Roberto and Christoff Sievernich. Even our dear Grimmer's 'Magnificent Steiner' persona is highly suspect. One of the fastest ways to make a child create such an aggressive 'other' personality is to sexually abuse him. It was clearly his way of pushing the angry, agressive, hate-filled part of himself aside, which was why we could all see the part that we came to love so much. This form of mental dissociation is sadly common among adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Frankly, all things considered, this dissociation was the only way anyone who survived Kinderhiem could be so genuinely nice.

Second, Johan himself might not have been actually raped, though he was probably exposed to other milder, but no less traumatizing forms of sexual abuse. He was a serial killer, but he was no lust killer. He got off on fear and chaos, not necessarily killing. There was absolutely no sexual element to his murders; and no weird pseudo-sexual deviations. (His cross-dressing was purely his mother's fault; He was comfortable in Anna's clothes because he spent a very good portion of his real childhood wearing them. Kinderheim had nothing to do with it.) Johan does not play. He simply kills people. And he does so in the most efficient manner he possibly can… when he does not just brainwash others into doing the dirty work for him.

However, Johan was definitely subjected to other forms of abuse. He had to have been. His obvious empathy for the character of Stephan Joos was a dead giveaway. And of course that tape…

There is no way I can write an accurate story about Johan and Kinderhiem without taking all these facts into consideration.

So, if you cannot read stories with dark themes like child abuse, please, please, please, do not read this.

You have been warned. So no flames.

And please, I honestly do not want any "I really can't see this happening to Johan" comments. It was hard enough for me to write this. I would not have done it at all if the results of my research indicated otherwise. Johan might have been a twisted genius and an adept brainwasher, but in the end, he was just a child left at the hands of evil and unscrupulous adults. Kinderhiem was the final collection of straws that broke the camel's back that was his sanity.

As Erna observed in Another Monster:

"But I think, if at that time, someone had truly extended him a loving hand and put him in a caring home, that he would have changed, and wouldn't have gone on to commit all those crimes."

So If you do decide to read this, all I can say is thank you for being so brave, and please review.

This story of course, is rated M... mostly for its squicky theme.

But you guessed that already, didn't you? :)

Enjoy, if you dare...