Colonia Dignidad's role as a center of political terror in Chile began to emerge only three years after Allende's overthrow. One of the few victims to leave alive said one tormentor had told them, "The work of the Reich continues here." [44].

The first to expose the truth was the United Nations. A human rights commission report released in October 1976 stated:

...in Colonia Dignidad there is a specially equipped underground torture center with small soundproofed cells, hermetically sealed. The detainees' heads are covered with leather hoods, which are stuck to their faces with chemical adhesives. In these cells, interrogations are carried out through electronic equipment, including loudspeakers and microphones, while detainees are tied naked to metal frames to receive electric shocks." [45].

The UN's report also documented dogs trained to attack and destroy the sexual organs of both sexes, experiments testing torture tolerance limits, and the use of special psychoactive drugs on subjects [46]. The UN commission found that the DINA-sponsored torture chambers of Colonia Dignidad were being used as "research center" to continue Mengele's work of refining the art of torture.

...prisoners have allegedly been subjected to different 'experiments' without any interrogation... Prisoners charge that torture is 'personalized' through an initial interrogation which establishes the personal traits of the individual... This data is then used to program the torture sessions so that the result is a totally debilitated person who wil comply with any demand [47].

In 1977, another former prisoner came forward. Juan Rene Munoz Alarcon was a Socialist Party member turned DINA collaborator. Munoz was later imprisoned by Pinochet for trying to protect an old leftist friend. In a taped deposition to the Catholic Church's human rights group in Santiago, Munoz indentified Colonia Dignidad as one of several places where disappeared political prisoners were taken by security forces. Shortly after giving his deposition to the Church group, Juan Munoz was found stabbed to death by parties unknown [48].

Later that same year, Amnesty International issued a report further documenting Colonia Dignidad's secret torture and detention centers. Portions of the report were even reprinted in the German news magazine, Stern.

Including testimony from both former prisoners and agents who worked there, the Amnesty report confirmed the hermetically sealed underground torture chambers. It confirmed prisoners were tied naked to electrified frames with leather hoods glued to their faces. There were more brutal accounts of "interrorgations over a closed-circuit radio system." [49].

In the report, ex-DINA agent Samuel Fuenzalida testified that he delivered prisoners to the colony. Fuenzalida was received by a man called "the professor", whom he identified from photographs as being Colonia patriarch, Paul Schaefer [50]. A number of surviving prisoners have also identified Schaefer as being personally involved in their confinement and torture. His glass eye and heavy German accent make him easily indentifiable [51].

Schaefer and the colony sued both Stern and Amnesty for libel, a battle which went on for some 20 years until the court finally ruled against him.