Behind the locked door
The Austrian house where a doctor experimented on children
Lives Less Ordinary · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
The Austrian house where a doctor experimented on children.
Evy Mages grew up in and out of foster care in 1970s and 80s Austria. But even when she started a new life in the US, she was haunted by traumatic memories of a strange yellow house high up in the Alps, where she had been placed as an eight-year-old. It took an idle internet search in her 50s to reveal that this was actually an institution called a 'Kinderbeobachtungsstation', or 'child-observation station', where vulnerable children were experimented on by a psychologist using shocking methods. She decided to step back into her past to uncover the full, disturbing truth of what happened there.
Evy’s story first appeared in a New Yorker article in September 2023.
Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Edgar Maddicott Editor: Rebecca Vincent