Íngrid Olderöck, the cruel torturer known as “the woman with the dogs” who inspired the Chilean short film nominated for an Oscar

Known as “the woman with the dogs”, Íngrid Felicitas Olderöck Bernhard was a former agent of the National Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the security service created by Augusto Pinochet after overthrowing Salvador Allende in 1973.

But she was not just another agent of the body in charge of torturing and eliminating political opponents of the military regime.

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Olderöck, a former Carabineros officer, became the most outstanding woman within the DINA and one of her functions was the training of dozens of young women whom she trained to confront political enemies.

Victims’ accounts accuse her of having trained dogs to rape political prisoners in the detention centers where many disappeared.

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Especially in one of the most brutal clandestine precincts, “The Sexy Bandage”a two-story house in a middle-class sector of the Macul commune, in Santiago, where Íngrid Olderöck used to operate.

The agents gave the clandestine center that name because the preferred method of torture was sexual abuse, as established in the first Report of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, better known as the Valech report.

dog violations

Survivors who passed through the Sexy Band, such as Beatriz Bataszew, have denounced the use of dogs as a method of torture, as well as hanging, drowning, mock executions, forced pregnancies, forced abortions or electric shocks to the genitals.

“In the Sexy Venda there was a dog named Volodia trained to sexually violate women,” he said in statements to the local press.

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A similar story is that of Alejandra Holzapfel, who was arrested at just 19 years of age in that house.

I was “sexually assaulted with a German shepherd dog that the agents of the dictatorship called Volodia,” Holzapfel told The Clinic newspaper.

“Ingrid directed the animal, while the other torturers forced the detainees to adopt positions that facilitated the abuse. Men and women who passed through La Venda Sexy were victims of this atrocity.”

Olderöck denied all the accusations and was never subjected to a judicial process.

The short film “Beast”

Her figure has returned to public debate after she became the protagonist of the animated short film “Bestia” by Chilean director Hugo Covarrubias, which was nominated for an Oscar this week.

"Beast" is the Oscar-nominated animated short film inspired by the life of Olderöck. (SHORT FILM BEAST).

“It’s a psychological thriller about a sinister mind”Covarrubias tells BBC Mundo.

One of the few people who had the opportunity to talk extensively with the former agent was the Chilean journalist Nancy Guzman,who published the book “Ingrid Olderock, the Woman of the Dogs”, in which -from those conversations- he elaborates a chronicle where he describes her as “the most powerful and brutal woman in the DINA”.

In the house of Oldeck

In dialogue with BBC Mundo, Guzmán recounts that one day in 1996 he knocked on the door of Olderöck’s house on Bremen Street, in the Ñuñoa commune.

“A woman with a thick body, large hands and a hoarse voice appeared, with a cigarette in her hand.”

It was her.

“She was wearing a flowery skirt, a vaguely pink handmade sweater, and short boots.”

“She lived completely alone,” says Guzmán. “She had no children, she had no husband.”

Olderöck, the writer continues in her story, “was the officer who took charge of the detachment of women within the DINA trained to torture, persecute and assassinate opponents”

“She was like a commando herself. She was a specialist in shooting, skydiving, martial arts, horseback riding and dog training.”

“She was the one who trained a dog named Volodya that during the torture sessions he dedicated himself to raping women and men,” says Guzmán.

“There are former detainees who suffered that torture or who saw what happened to others. They all remember that one of the young women, Marta Neira, came crying desperate and destroyed because she was the victim of the dog’s rape. Days later Marta disappeared.”

“I am a Nazi”

Íngrid Olderöck’s father emigrated from Germany in 1925, at the age of 29.

Along with her sisters, Hannelore and Karin, they grew up under a very strict family system.

They were not allowed to speak Spanish or have Chilean friends.

This is how they grew practically isolated.

“I’ve been a Nazi since I was littlesince I learned that the best period that Germany lived was when the Nazis were in power, when there was work and tranquility and there were no shameless thieves”, says Olderöck in Guzmán’s book.

BEAST SHORT FILM.

When in 1967 Carabineros authorized the admission of women to its School of Officers, Olderöck entered the first competition.

She was the first woman parachutist in Chile and Latin America. She claimed to be an expert in horseback riding and dog training, as well as having a blue belt in judo.

She also practiced tennis, skiing, mountaineering and claimed to be an expert in shooting.

With those credentials, he quickly became part of the secret service directed by Colonel Manuel Contreras: the DINA.

As he demonstrated his abilities, Olderöck consolidated his position of power within the service.

One bullet in the head and one in the stomach.

But in 1981 his life took a turn.

Leaving her house, she was attacked by two strangers who he was shot at close range in the head and stomachbut they didn’t kill her.

In fact, he survived until the end of his days with a bullet lodged in his head, says Guzmán.

They accused members of the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR, of the attack.

However, Olderöck always insisted that the attack had been planned against her by the very intelligence services that were trying to punish her for her alleged defection attempt.

After the attack she retired from Carabineros and when the justice summoned her to testify in the cases of disappeared detainees from La Venda Sexy, she pretended to have amnesia, says Guzmán.

“He had no mercy”

“She was a violent, aggressive woman who had no mercy,” he adds.

BEAST SHORT FILM.

In one of the conversations she told him that she always had three guns: a gun in the bag, another on the nightstand and one in the kitchen oven.

“So she stands up, goes to the kitchen, comes back and puts the gun on the table. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Until I tell her ‘take out this weapon, I don’t like weapons’ and at that moment she gets furious and tells me that she hates people like me. She kept repeating to me… ‘I hate you, I hate pacifists'” .

That’s how the interviews were, says Guzmán. On another occasion he told her to be careful because there was an active organization of former agents called DINITA and that “anything could happen to him.”

“She was a terrible character in a world of horror,” the writer reflects. “Societies have these monsters. And these monsters do not end with dictatorships. Monsters are permanently in societies.”

At the age of 58, Íngrid Olderöck died alone, from an acute digestive hemorrhage, without having been convicted of any crime.

________________________________

First excerpt from the book “Ingrid Olderock, the Woman of the Dogs” by Nancy Guzmán.

—Were you in the Sexy Band?

“The Sexy Blindfold?” Where was she? No!

—La Venda Sexy was a two-story house with a central staircase that went up to the second floor and was located in Los Plátanos con Iran, in the commune of Macul.

—In Los Plátanos with Iran? No, I do not remember. I didn’t know her, I was never there.

“Don’t you remember the place?” There were dogs there and it worked until December 1974.

“No, I’m sure I was never there. If you don’t believe me, you can test me with hypnosis; I’ve told the judge a lot about that: “Interrogate me with hypnosis,” and she hasn’t paid any attention to me.

And they don’t want me to believe that I wasn’t in any of the places where I am accused of having tortured people. You are not going to believe me, but since the accident I have forgotten many things.

If when I left the hospital I didn’t know how to speak Spanish, I spoke in pure German. I also forgot to play the violin. I had learned as a girl to play the violin. I don’t know why that happened to me. I had to learn to speak Spanish again and the judge did not believe that.

Second excerpt from the conversations:

—You are accused of having trained dogs to rape prey. There are former detainees who say that you gave the order to the dogs to commit sexual aberrations.

—Yes, they accuse me of that in the United Nations, but I would like to know how to train dogs to do that. I have never trained dogs to rape, I am a dog trainer and I have awards, but the first thing I am going to say is that I have only had female dogs, never dogs.

Listen, you know that I am accused of many terrible things. I don’t know where they get those things, but I’m calm because I haven’t done any of that torture.

—If you say you haven’t trained dogs to torture, who did? Or did the DINA accuse you to carry out the attack?

—I believe that everything is possible, but I don’t understand why.

—Then, how do you explain that you are accused of having participated in this type of torture?

—Oh! I don’t know where they get so much nonsense from, if they have accused me of I don’t know how many nonsense.

—And where do you think that information comes from to the human rights organizations?

-I dont know. I have had to go to court many times because I am accused of so much barbarity and I only worked as an analyst in the Purén brigade at the DINA.

_________________________________

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Source: Elcomercio