How TA began

 

from UK Press Gazette, 12th May 2000

It was a unique exercise in interactive web investigation, harnessing the extraordinary power of the internet to find people, prompt them to play a part, tempt them to come forward and tell of their experiences"

Michael Durham

Petersen is the founder and controller of a world wide movement called Tvind, which opens charities, runs schools and operates "development projects" in more than 40 countries. It is an extremely rich and rather sinister organisation.

Last week, The Times ran a feature and picture of Petersen headlined: "Cruel mind games inside the world of a secret cult." But it was my website and it was my story and I am rather proud of the way it was achieved.

This was perhaps a unique exercise in "interactive web investigation", harnessing the extraordinary power of the internet in this case, to find people, prompt them to play a part, tempt them to come forward and tell of their experiences.

I got the idea of building an investigative website about Tvind last autumn, while confined indoors with a viral infection. I had known about Tvind for years, having first written about the organisation in 1996 as a staff writer on The Observer. It was a story that refused to go away readers and journalists from all over the world continued to contact me with new information and I had amassed a large dossier, with more information constantly arriving.

Now freelancing, I decided it was time to dust off the story and offer it about. It was clear that Tvind, once solely Scandinavian, was now expanding massively throughout the world, especially in the US and Central America, and it was still busy in Britain

I dug out the file, but nobody seemed interested. The Guardian sent me to Zimbabwe to find Petersen, but the person who commissioned the piece simply looked at the copy and declared "we cant say that" before dropping it in the bin. The Express showed an interest, but dropped it half way through. Nobody liked the word "cult".

Frustrated? Just a bit. So I decided to publish an investigation myself on the web. I taught myself -website construction, which is surprisingly easy, with a commercial programme, and began to copy over my "dossier" about six bankers boxes of documents, letters, financial statements, pictures and newspaper clippings. I gave it some zippy graphics and a user-friendly feel, found free computer space and published it as "Tvind Alert: an interactive web investigation".

It succeeded beyond my wildest imaginings. Over four months, Tvinds secrets spilled on to my computer screen. As the site reached search engines, folk looking for information on Tvind (or any of its many alternative names) began to stumble into it. Word spread, apparently like wildfire, even within the organisation. The first 10 visitors were an intriguing novelty, then the web counter reached 50, 100, then 300. It has now been visited more than 3,000 times.

I placed a "contact me" button on the site linked to a unique e-mail address. The first messages arrived within days, mostly from Denmark where there is a large Movement Against Tvind, which sent me reports, documents and translations. Then disaffected students, volunteers and employees at Tvind projects began to get in touch, confidentially offering to pass on whatever they could find and interesting it was, too. Before long I was running a series of "agents".

MANY PEOPLE WHO felt they had been exploited by Tvind wrote in from all over the world Ireland, France, Sweden, New Zealand, the US, the Czech Republic, Japan offering "their story". A stream of e-mails arrived from students (including three young students from China) explaining why they had decided to leave Tvind colleges in Denmark and England, where they felt exploited, deceived, bullied and financially ripped off.

It all added to a picture, now confirmed from a host of independent, mutually corroborative sources, of Tvind as a somewhat sinister, exploitative cult. Tvind began as a Maoist alternative school system in the Seventies, but at some point in the past 30 years it seems to have gone off the rails, tying followers in to psychological dependency, loyalty and obedience while at the same time spending huge sums buying up property, companies and land holdings, apparently allowing a comfortably off lifestyle for the leadership.

Suddenly, in the course of a few weeks, my dossier had expanded enormously. And all I had to do was wait for e-mails to arrive. Well, not quite. From the start, I was aware I might be hoaxed or the victim of a "dirty trick". Everything was followed up. I always made independent checks to establish the identity of the sender before relying on any information in an e-mail and where possible I would phone them too. I rejected many promising leads, including detailed allegations about where and how Petersen was said to be living, because they were anonymous. Another useful source of corroborative information, though often anonymous, has been a "guest book" at the website.

Specialist internet search engines helped turn up new information in more than 50 countries and there are some entertaining tricks to harness here too I even got my mobile phone to ring me when an e-mail or new information about Tvind is posted to the web. This happens every couple of days.

Gadgetry aside, I knew I had cracked the story when an e-mail arrived from a stranger in Sweden named Lars. It said: "Thank you. You have helped save my daughter." Suddenly I was a social worker as well as a journalist after a story.

Lars daughter, Annelie, was a student at Tvinds College of International Cooperation and Development in Yorkshire. He had found my website, made checks of his own and then phoned me to say he was coming-to England to get his daughter.

Other students at the same college contacted me asking for more information and seeking help to extricate them a difficult situation. Many of them had parted with large sums of money. An account of-the "rescue party" was featured in The Times investigation. I had got the story, but I continue to play the role of social worker. Yesterday I was contacted by a distraught mother concerned that her 24-year-old son, at a Tvind college in Denmark, is estranged from her.

Ill leave the site up, because you never know what e-mails are going to arrive. And I hope Petersen may click on it one day.

Michael Durham used Microsoft Front Page 2000 and a scanner to build the site on a Dell Mi66 PC. Domain name registration, hosting and e-mail addresses were free with an ISP and web e-mail providers. "Tvind Alert: an interactive web investigation" is at www.tvindalert.org.uk