Are Two Missing Girls Being Hidden in an Anti-Vax Commune?

Police in Paraguay have questioned a man who may have rented a car to the non-custodial parents of two 10-year-old girls who disappeared in Germany more than six months ago. The children are thought to have been taken by their anti-vax parents to a conspiracy-theorist commune in Paraguay.

Clara Magdalena Egler and Lara Valentina Blank both disappeared in November, and were thought to have entered Paraguay with Clara’s father, Andreas Rainer Egler, and Lara’s mother, Anna Maria Schapf, who are married, but who do not have legal custody of the girls.

“Presumably they intended to live in some anti-vaccine community in the interior of the country because they belong to COVID-denial groups,” the Children and Adolescents’ Rights Coordinator (CDIA) group, which is helping track down the girls, said at a news conference in Paraguay with Clara’s tearful mother, Anne Maja, and Lara’s father, Filip Blank. The parents have been trying to track down their former spouses and children for months without the help of police, but have now gone public to try to get their daughters back.

Clara’s mother and Lara’s father are the parents who have legal custody of the 10-year-olds, and they are concerned that their daughters may be subjected to unthinkable harm inside a commune where a number of conspiracy-theorist Europeans have set up. These gated communes, including the El Paraíso Verde, or The Green Paradise, The Daily Beast reported about in January, are difficult for authorities to enter.

During the pandemic, German citizens were the highest number of registered expatriates to Paraguay and tend to dominate the demographic in these communities, which have advertised on conspiratorial blogs and guarantee Paraguay citizenship and an escape from everything from vaccine mandates to chem trails. Around 26,000 Germans are thought to be living in communes in the South American country. The man police questioned about renting the car to the couple is thought to be working for a group that helps Germans fast-track Paraguay citizenship and residency documents.

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Paraguay police say they believe the girls may be with their non-custodial parents at the La Colmena commune, according to German private investigators working for the custodial parents. But Paraguay authorities have been hesitant to disturb the communities, the parents say, possibly because they pour millions of dollars into the impoverished country every year. “We have very closed German communities that make the investigative task a bit difficult,” Mario Vallejos, deputy chief of Anti-Kidnapping of Paraguay, said at the press conference. They are now asking for citizens in the area near the communes if they have ever seen the children.

The German embassy in Paraguay says there have been other reports of children being taken to these communes by divorced parents. In 2021, more than 250 children in Germany were thought to have been kidnapped by a non-custodial parent, up from 186 cases the year before the pandemic and COVID restrictions.

Both the custodial parents said that before the beginning of COVID mandates, which are strict in Germany, they had good relationships with their ex spouses. “We were the best separated parents,” Blank said at the press conference. “The best parents that Lara could have.”

Clara’s mother also made a plea to her ex-husband at the conference. “Andreas, please, put an end to this situation that is robbing me and so many others of sleep. Please contact us or the lawyers or someone you trust. Let us find a solution together. Clara and Lara surely do not feel very well with this situation. They cannot spend the rest of their childhood on the run,” she said. “I am placing all my hope in the Paraguayan people. Please help us, I am a desperate mother.”

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