Prison psychologist Susanne after dinner: your Trauma drove her to the death your case as ARD-Film

And then Susanne after dinner from your office, the police, the SWAT team, her colleagues stepped in, all staring at you. She grabbed the hands of foreign people, they almost fell to the ground, screamed, cried. They were in a different room, where a doctor treated you. There were wounds in her face, but not what was done to her. The most Important thing was: she lived.

In the back of an ambulance, you drove her to a clinic. There, in the hospital of the merciful brothers, in the middle of Bavaria, they had no "morning after" pill. A pastor took her to a pharmacy.

Nine years later, at her kitchen table, she spoke barely above these Details of the seven hours. We asked afterwards, we wanted to spare her and said that we would use when Writing to their portrayals in the book. You might have seen the actually as a consideration. Or as a lack of recognition of their suffering. In between, namely the ridge, on which everyone who speaks with Traumatized about their fight.

As her new life began, had to after dinner to tell what was happening behind her office door. No matter how hard it fell. Because they would have been silent, no one would have know that it has given her Trauma at all. Because you knew through your career, how important her portrayal would be before the court, wrote a few days after the fact, everything. She told it to the police and people who were close to her. But otherwise she kept to herself. Many believe today that you've been looking for the Public, because you wanted to sell your book. After dinner received after the publication of the book correspondence, in which it was said that she wanted to Profit from their fate. "Even today, I would prefer it, I would never have to write to", began the Preface to the second edition.

In truth, fled after dinner, first, before the Public. The Doctors wrote you sick. "It wasn't my mother, as I remembered," said her son later about this time in a television documentary. "It was sort of a ruined woman. Totally broken. Like a different person almost."

after dinner her husband went back to the apartment in Magdeburg, almost 500 km away from Straubing. From the kitchen window you look out onto a small courtyard, surrounded by several buildings. The balconies are so close together that the neighbors can chat. It was spring, and after dinner wanted to go to the air, you sat on the balcony and looked as so often, into the Void. The neighbors wondered. "Hey, Suse, are so much here!" was such a set, you still had years later in the ear. "What do you say? I'm out sick? Then: Oh, what is it? And then just babble," she said.

you don't have the stomach for it. It felt as if you'd be lying. And so the more neighbors know to and to know.

The court process before. Alone the thought of it tortured her. As a victim, as the most important witness, she had to testify, even if she was scared. But you should also participate as a plaintiff in the process? Her husband, in spite of the fact ten days later, had married ("Now only right", he had said), and her son were. "You wanted to, that Fenomenbet I am more than a file number. But I was terrified. And just before the hearing I said: Okay, I'll do it Under one condition: that I not in the public statement. I'll do that."

With sunglasses, she entered the courtroom. Her heart was racing. In her Hand she held tranquilizers. "And then, the defendant requested that the Public be excluded from the entire process, because it is in the process of his intimate sphere. I thought I was crazy. His Intimate Sphere? I couldn't believe it. And someone then said that the application would be rejected if I public statement."

What now? It is only a brief recess remained. In these two minutes, the course for the coming years, even if you did not see it. "You're probably that asshole does not give the right to a protected peaceful and PRhäre," said her son, then 17. "You think it's because if I tell all of them?" she asked him. He nodded.

"With my public statement are broken the dams. Suddenly, the cameras were in front of my nose. For the full program." Preuskers first step in Public was not voluntary.

But he felt right.

The process had transformed her, she remembered in her kitchen. This Moment in which she saw the perpetrator in the eyes. "And then he peeped. He couldn't stand up. That was an important feeling."

Was the process of therapy?

"sort of. Me that the court saw. I've managed to do it. And it was important for me that he was punished. This sentence: He is guilty. Of the was important. The sentence not so much." K. was sentenced to 13 years and nine months in prison followed by preventive detention. Its prospects of ever being free again, are bad.

Also through the process, learned after dinner that the crime and all the feelings belonged to her. From the beginning, she knew she would need professional help to be able to with this part of your life.

a therapy easier, if you yourself are a therapist?

"It does not help necessarily," she replied. "Because of this Diagnose, to Apply the methodology, how it has been learned that a itself is not how it works."

after dinner visited several therapists. Her first goal was to be able to the happened to think, without losing the nerve. In hour-long sessions she endured her martyrdom in one's thoughts again and again. "This is like a stone," she said in her kitchen, "you let the water run. At some point he is around." Eventually, you could even write the book. Even if it sounds absurd, she wanted to gain distance, because you could put your story then literally in a drawer.

The second goal was to be able to their daily life, to drive into a dark underground garage, without panicking due to the feeling, to be trapped, and can barely escape. Together with her therapist, she ventured again and again in situations like this. Exposure therapy they call it. The Problem is the countless triggers that were planted in her consciousness. At the time, in your office, your brain had switched into a type of emergency mode and the body with stress hormones flooded. The brain may associate the traumatic experiences with sensory perceptions. Survivors of the Ramstein disaster, described, for example, that the smell of freshly mown Grass, combined with many years later on panic attacks. The lawn had been mowed prior to the air show. For some Syrian refugees have come to Germany, is the Pop of the new year's eve firecrackers mental torture. And some patients who can hardly remember their struggle for Survival in an intensive care unit, experience by the smell of disinfectant a Flashback. Intrusion is what psychologists call such recollections. And odors are the most powerful anchor.

after dinner, there was little worse than stinky sweaty white undershirts. The offender was wearing one, and her blood left a stain on it. Locked doors could put you in a panic. Also, the Tape that had your son for setting his Football injuries at home. She saw it, she got heart palpitations, because K. had you tied up with duct tape. In the kitchen, she yelled once her husband Wolfram. "Put the knife down, put the knife away!" He had just cut a slice of bread. "Because this feeling was for a long time," she said once in a television documentary, "what if you're in tungsten is also wrong?"

The trauma expert Sybille Jatzko, who has served in collaboration with her husband hundreds of crime and disaster victims, compared in an essay on the Survivors of the Ramstein disaster, the life of the Affected record. A vinyl record, get a scratch on it. The scratch is an accident, a crime, whatever. He never goes away. The needle of the record player touched the spot, she jumps up and a pain sound. Never again, the panel will sound the way you sound once.

after dinner found its way back into everyday life. Learned to be in closed spaces. Or with your son to shop. The panic attacks they met from year to year rare. In a disused prison in Magdeburg, she trained even, long, bald prison corridors with bars in the Windows, along. Piece by piece she reclaimed her courage.

The fly, Locked up in a plane, fell to her still hard, which is why the prospect that her son, now mid 20's, could soon move to Canada, prepared your last grief. "Oh, somehow I'll figure it out," she said, almost defiantly, in the kitchen. "Not for the time I've been screaming just a little bit." She laughed. And we laughed.

In her new life, she was busy with the Events of the time. Every day was a struggle against the Trigger. Constantly had sessions of therapy. In addition, the process they focused on for years before a court order to your Pension, because, as a psychologist, she could no longer work.

Other subjects she had to struggle. She wrote a guidebook about dogs, and several thrillers. Psychologists speak of a new "thought tracks", you are not important, you grid always on the same motorway in the head. In spite of her trauma, to her, is not known, and many succeeded: it kept the interest in others and their problems. Her last book was all about two women whose deep friendship sent out by the cancer death of a.

which she did, in the Public Association with the fact, in April 2009. Again and again we have been asked to take readings. At conferences you discussed asked about victims ' rights, offers of assistance need to be strengthened. She gave the other, left by the Trauma of silence, a voice. Who creates it to be a fact, and its consequences to the public in such honest words?

Every appearance it cost. But to have coped with it gave her strength.

what is debt?, the question that we brought.

"Even if it would sit forever, the debt he could not repay, so long life is," she said. "He has my life ... 'destroyed' I don't want to say. But he has changed my life significantly, against my will. And he has, and that makes the guilt even people who are close to me and those I love, hurt. To always on. My Son. No 17-Year-old should have to experience something. He has him a piece of youth."

Could you ever forgive him?

"Never ever. Never!"

Preuskers anger was still there. "Anger is better than fear," she said. She called the offenders in our conversation, never by name, but either "Idiot" or "type". His face you'll never forget. "If I had to draw it now, I could." And the expression on his face? "Yes, Yes, Yes. You will not forget. Sometimes in the city I see people who look like him, and then I cringe. And I think it is hard when people speak in his Franconian dialect."

in Order to take revenge, had formulated after dinner many years ago, a letter to K.. From the therapy sessions with him in the prison, she knew about the wounds in his family and his Childhood know. You wrote a statement that would only understand it because it was so intimate.

"I have in the past year, often to their grandparents think," it says. "And the story of the boy in the coat of a dog crying. You have disappointed many people and lied to ... But you have not destroyed me, K."

The letter was delivered, the management of the institution, in the K. it was replaced, had concerns. "The thought that it would do him some good. But I rode in court, that the letter is handed to him," said after dinner. "Every sentence in it hits to the heart."

you've never get an answer, but she didn't want to, "I'd lie". With the letter she put the old power relationship, again – that was her most important.

In her book, the word suicide is a one Time, at one point, she tells of a therapy session. The therapist had asked: "or you have thoughts of suicide?"

And after dinner wrote: "I lie and say no, and he does so, as if he believed me."

We have not addressed in these lines. During the hours in her apartment, she was strengthened. So, as you would have realized the words with which your book had ended: "And my other plans? Life." Goodbye you led us once more across the hall, the room in which she wrote lonely on her books, from the Desk you can look out on the Cathedral of Magdeburg.

I went in the Faith, that they survived. That you can live with and want.

But as a Journalist it is time only for the Surface inspectors, with a couple of questions in the Block and only a couple of hours. Not A Friend. Not A Therapist. Certainly not a Confidant.

And what do you mean "survived"? Can you survive such a thing? Where is the point where you know: "Now is good"? There may be the point at all, if every day carries with it the risk that a crash is a smell in a Flashback?

psychologists have found in studies that victims of rape have a lot to fight more often (in about 50 percent of cases) with a Trauma as, for example, Survivors of a natural disaster (4.5 percent). Suffered rape also increases the risk of suicide dramatically. A rape you can't push to a higher Power. It is not a stroke of fate, some may say that a God had it planned that way. After a rape, there is no community of fate, because it was alone when it happened. The fact, happens in the Innermost of one's own body. In view of Susanne after dinner has survived a lot more than. Has fought back, a new job found, together with husband and son kept their family together, as a campaigner for victims ' rights, she was a role model.

"We would call you again if any questions arise," I said on the way to the door. "And a photographer will contact you, if you agree."

"Yeah, right," she replied.

The photographer rang ten days later at your door. A friend of the family opened. It was difficult, he said. Then he'll just come back later, suggested the photographer. No, it is in General difficult.

So, we learned that she had died two days earlier.

Why? Why now? There was a trigger? Psychologists speak of episodes in the lives of the Traumatized. Light and dark. The darkness often comes at a year. Or, if life with all of the non-erasable memories is exhausting. If the Fight-a more and more exhausted. And the certainty of a growing that the fight will never stop.

hours after the death reached the news, I heard me the audio recording of our conversation. I could have something to remember? ? Their voice sound, not brittle. You can hear how you are reminded of your dog, as you raves from Hamburg, where the film's Director Christian Görlitz had showed her the just-finished screen adaptation of your book, which will be broadcast in the summer on Arte and in the autumn in the ARD. It felt weird to see your own story in a movie theater, she said. In some scenes you've weggeguckt. However, the Film did please her very well. Of panic or trigger language. Even in our interview passages about her Trauma, her voice sounded sure, many of our questions may have been new to you. None of you hesitated to answer. They spoke openly about their Fears. She left for the us only even more. She knew her soul. You knew how vulnerable you are vulnerable still.

Susanne after dinner died on the 13. February 2018.

you have suicidal thoughts? Help the phone offers pastoral care. It is anonymous, free-of-charge and round-the-clock 0 800 / 111 0 111 and 0 800 / 111 0 222 accessible. A consultation via E-Mail. A list of Federal-aid stations can be found on the page of the German society for suicide prevention.

For children and young people, the number against sorrow from Monday to Saturday from 14 to 20 hours - the number of 116 11.