.................Welcome To My Home Pages Presented In English..............
with links to material presented in Danish.

....................... THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU! ........................

In order to understand the miscarriage of justice I have suffered at the hands of the Danish Authorities, it is necessary to introduce myself: My name is Bernt Corfixen Sorensen.

I graduated from the Danish Business College Tietgenskolen in Odense in 1956 and emigrated to Australia the same year. The reason for my decision to emigrate was based on an assessment of my chances of getting into a job which in view of my background and education could satisfy my ambitions.

In those days, before the travel revolution caused by aeroplanes with jet engines, emigration was usually considered a final goodbye to family and friends, because only very few migrants to far away places could ever afford the time consuming and expensive cost of visiting their homeland. This, and the reality that everything I knew about Australia before my departure was only what I had read, plus the fact that I could only afford a one-way ticket on an emigrant ship from Marseille to Sydney, where I would arrive without any other possessions than the clothes I was wearing, made the parting with my parents and four brothers extra difficult.

Because of a natural ability to communicate in foreign languages, after a comprehensive training I was in 1962 offered a position in export marketing with a British Public Company "Nu-Swift Limited" (manufacture and sale of fire fighting equipment). I signed a contract with the said company under which I was obligated to international travel activities during a minimum of 300 days per year. Due to the nature of my work, it belonged under "Section 21 & 31 Schedule E of the British Finance Act regarding Duties of Office and Employment carried on abroad", and as such my international income was not taxed in United Kingdom. On the other hand it should be noted, that as is normal in cases like mine, the company adjusted my income downwards in accordance with my tax-free position, and the gained tax advantage did therefore not benefit me personally but enabled lower prices to the company's export customers whereby making the company's products more competitive internationally.

My worldwide duties involved finding and appointing suitable concessionaires and salesmen, plus training them in the use and sale of my company's products. Only three years later I was promoted to International Marketing Director. From the date of my appointment and the following 22 years I worked in approximately 20 different countries per year. It was a challenging but also a debilitating travel existence where I virtually lived out of a suitcase, i.e. in constantly changing hotel rooms. It was for instance one of my duties to introduce my company's products in places where in case of fire one is without help such as for example in Australia's more remote areas where there are often great distances between the individual farms, or in primitive communities in the so called third world such as missions, or isolated villages in thinly inhabited areas such as in Borneo and New Guinea.

My work was a full time job from early morning to late evening seven days a week, and it is doubtful whether I would have been able to perform my difficult and demanding job had it not been for the support and encouragement which I especially needed during the early years and which was given me so generously by my late English wife Patricia who after our marriage in 1963 and during the following eleven years was my indefatigable and constant travel companion.

My work was for various reasons not without danger, apart from the demands to make ever larger fire demonstrations in order to secure orders from government institutions such as military and navies, it was also necessary when having to convince companies with especially hazardous fire risks such as oil companies and various types of chemical factories about the superiority of our products. Furthermore a few times we also inadvertently landed in the middle of revolutions and unrest. The biggest danger for our health was however the various tropical diseases of which both Patricia and I suffered more than our fair share. To compensate us for the discomforts and the occasional exposure to risks inherent in my job, as my company paid for our expenses we did not have many possibilities to spend money, which therefore allowed us to save for our future and what we hoped would be a comfortable old age. To this could be added that I enjoyed the challenge with which my work presented me, and the special satisfaction I felt by both directly and indirectly saving human lives, workplaces plus homes and property.

After suffering a severe attack of dengue fever in Guatemala, a mosquito transmitted disease with pain so excruciating that it can be likened to a feeling as if every bone in the body was being slowly broken, hence the popular name "break bone fever" plus a more serious disease of the eyes Patricia acquired in Ecuador (South America), and which for a time threatened to blind her, but luckily only resulted in a reduced sight. She was in 1974 both physically and mentally so broken down that doctors demanded she should stop travelling and have a home. As Patricia had no family who could look after her, and I at that time still had my mother and four brothers with families in Denmark who all loved her, we decided to investigate whether she could get a home in Denmark whilst I continued my international work, and if that could be possible, how often I could visit
her without changing my status as a Dane living abroad.

Attributable to ignorance or bad judgement it was at this point in time I because of an absolute 100 percent trust in the Danish Authorities' integrity that I committed my life's biggest mistake. Based on my personal experience, the following is advice I hope will be able to prevent other Danish expatriates from mishandling and unjust treatment by criminal elements amongst Danish Authorities like those my late wife and I have had to suffer. I have done nothing which could not have been done by any other law-abiding person.

Anybody can be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and be picked out to receive the bureaucracy's anger, which must be assumed to carry out the government's wishes, a government which in return has been elected by the majority. During the following years and even today I and my nearest have been made to suffer under the same hands, and that in spite of the fact that I have not broken any law.

It is of such stuff that dictatorships are made.

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