THE BACKGROUND OF THE CONTROVERSY:

 A tragic 'War of the Roses' destabilizes the UFO Scene

One of the most tragic chapters life can ever write is about the divorce from a previously beloved partner. Not only has the couple grown apart but what was once a passionate love affair has now grown cold. Both parties realize they will have to continue the remainder of their lives on separate paths, without the other—and more often than not the divorce also signifies disillusionment. Suddenly one partner views the other, to whom he or she previously offered love and understanding for so long, in a different light, from a negative angle. Or else, one partner wishes to see only the negative side of the other... More often than not, divorce is also a time when "dirty linens" are aired. And the more passionate the love once was, the fiercer the ensuing "War of the Roses" becomes. The divorced individual loses all objectivity, all respect for the partner, and frequently even self-respect. The divorced partner embarks on levels from where he or she accuses the ex-partner of everything under the sun and, at the same time, pitches lightning, stones, and often rubbish. All of this is paired with a hefty amount of self-righteousness, for every divorced person wants to present to others an image of being the pathetic, innocent victim of a brute. And with every possible means the individual secretly attempts to destroy the former partner on the grounds of feeling profoundly disappointed and abandoned by the partner. The motto is: 'If he won't be happy with me, I'll see to it that he won't be happy with anyone else either.'

It is unfair and the lowest of shoddy tabloid journalism to publicly judge a man based on statements made by his divorced wife or, by the same token, judge a woman by her ex-husband's accounts. Were one to do so, the entire world of divorced partners would almost exclusively consist of "criminals" and "tramps." Would you trust Mia Farrow to write a somewhat unbiased biography of Woody Allen? My point precisely! But tactfulness and restraint do not count in the dark world of UFO agitation, which some people believe is "research." Yet, this is how a Swiss couple's divorce battle entered the UFO gazettes, and some "naivelings" do exist who actually take the word of the ex-wife about her ex-husband as the gospel truth. Quo vadis, ufology? Until now we only expected such things from Bildzeitung [a German blood-and-guts tabloid]...

The man to whom we refer bears the name Meier. He, Eduard "Billy" Meier, is a well-known contactee, i.e., he claims having had contacts since his childhood with inhabitants from the Pleiades. And there is much evidence for this claim. In 1975 and 1976 Meier took more than one thousand excellent color UFO photographs whose authenticity was examined and validated by top experts from NASA and the US Air Force. He recorded UFO whirring sounds and produced effects whose duplication would have required an entire recording studio, so say Hollywood sound engineers. He brought back metal fragments which, according to an IBM chemistry expert, were produced through a "cold fusion" process unknown on Earth. As well, more than 40 eyewitnesses accompanied him to his contacts, where they observed the arrivals and departures of the glowing, flying objects.

In 1966 Meier married a young Greek girl, whom he had met and fallen in love with on one of his world travels. The young woman found it difficult to feel at home in her unfamiliar Swiss surroundings. In 1975, when Meier revealed to the public that he was having contacts, her ordeal began that was to last 20 years: The ridicule by her neighbors in this rural region who had already been suspiciously eyeing this "exotic" female, the onslaught of curious visitors who, when they could not gain access to Meier himself, then expected answers to all mysteries of the universe at least from this totally overtaxed Greek woman—and all the while she was simply playing "second fiddle," a mere shadow figure beside her suddenly world famous husband who had captured everyone's interest. Against her will she was thrown into the public limelight, and yet she remained a mere appendage of her husband, about whose experiences everyone wanted to hear.

And Meier was like a man possessed. He worked day and night in order to transcribe, with his one intact arm, his reports about the contact conversations and the extraterrestrial revelations. During the night he would attend his contacts from which he returned early in the morning, completely exhausted and then unable to work; some supporters invited him to settle into a rural community, where he has lived now since 1978/79 in a form of countryside commune called the "Semjase-Silver-Star-Center." Family life, privacy, and the "very normal marriage" they both had hoped for no longer existed.

Everyone who was introduced to Billy's wife at the Semjase-Silver-Star-Center, myself included, could sense that this woman was profoundly unhappy in her role. Her facial features hardened and her love grew cold. She left the rural community in March '94, but when her jump-start into independence proved unsuccessful, she returned to the Center in November. However, her return was short-lived. Within 6 months there was the definite moving out for good and the divorce proceedings were launched in the spring of 1995. The marriage has now ended in divorce. But the controversy rages on -- pushed forward to the public by slandering shoddy tabloid journalism.

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