Anne Germain Breaks Her Silence

Anne knew she had a gift from childhood.  As soon as she could speak, she realised that she was different from her brothers and sisters.  She could see things, well, people really, that they couldn’t.  She didn’t understand why her brothers and sisters couldn’t see the other people at first; but the people they couldn’t see told her not to worry, so she just learned to accept that that was the way it was.    

 Anne didn’t ever make a great show of her gift, but, as time went by, she found that she could help people, and who doesn’t want to do that?  She started giving readings to people for free.  However, even mediums have to put food on the table, so Anne, reluctantly, started to charge people.  Not for her gift, but for her time.

 As time went by, Anne’s list of regular clients grew.  Anne was happy giving readings to her local regulars, and also to people in Scotland, with whom she’d grown very popular.

Anne would have been quite content to carry on like this, but, one day, she received an e-mail from someone in Portugal who asked for her to do private readings first by phone, then travelling to Lisbon Portugal.  After several visits she was asked if she’d like to participate in a TV pilot.

At first, Anne was horrified.  She didn’t want to be famous and she didn’t want to be on television.  The people in Portugal were very persuasive, and finally, Anne agreed.  Anne went over with her friend, Su, and was booked fully throughout the days leading up to the TV show.  She was to become very popular in Lisbon and is still.

The production company had arranged for a popular Portuguese TV soap star to guest with Anne, so that Anne could do a “cold” reading for her.  Anne had no idea that there would be a “guest star” until the day in question, much less who it was going to be, although it would have made no difference.  Anne didn’t get enough time to watch UK TV very often, much less Portuguese TV.

Ignes (the English translation is Agnes) was totally amazed by the things that Anne told her, things that only she and her recently deceased soap co-star had known.  After Ignes’ reading, Anne did readings for members of the audience.  Everyone seemed very happy and the pilot was feted as a great success.

Anne was asked to do a series of twelve shows and she was put into a difficult position where it was almost impossible to refuse the shows due to pressure.  Then having completed the taping, the initial 12 shows were aired and all went well.  She was asked to do another.  Anne was happy with the way things were going, and the show was sold to a company in Spain.  The two shows were running concurrently for a while, and all was going well. 

Anne was happy and the production companies were happy, but then, the things started to change with the Portuguese company.  First of all, she found out that members of the crew had been told that they were not allowed to speak to her, in case people thought she was being fed information about people who were to participate in the show.  As time went on, the other members of the crew were told that Anne needed complete quiet so that she could meditate or that she was tired.  It got so that no-one would speak to Anne while she was having her hair and make-up done.  The only person who was allowed in Anne’s dressing room was Anne’s dresser, and even she wasn’t allowed to stay once Anne was dressed.  Anne had to start taking her meals in her dressing room because that was the story that was spread around about her, that she wanted to alone all of the time.  At one point she was even told that the canteen wasn’t open any longer and that they would bring food for her to save her travelling into the town when fully made up for TV.

Being a sociable person, Anne found this very distressing.  She felt lonely and isolated particularly when people stopped speaking English around her and only spoke in Portuguese, which Anne doesn’t speak.  Even when she was doing private readings, the only people allowed nearby were people from the production company.  When she took the CD recording of the reading out to the client, she wasn’t allowed to stay and chat.  All very different from what she was used to.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, Anne suffers from asthma, and is a non-smoker, but the crew would all smoke around Anne.  One day, driving in the car with other crew members, Anne had a massive asthma attack.  She thought she was going to die.  The other crew members were so busy chatting to each other that they didn’t notice.  It was only when the driver stopped the car to help that anyone else realised that there was a problem.  The driver spoke English so he helped Anne and she recovered.

One day, reps from both the Spanish production and TV companies came to Portugal to see the show while it was being taped.  Anne knew that they were there but really didn’t think anything of it.  When the filming was finished, Anne had a meeting with them, over a cup of coffee, and gave an impromptu reading to one of the senior managers from the TV Company.  Anne told the manager things that no-one else present knew; things that had happened when she was a younger woman, at university.  Anne told her that she while had been driving, her car had broken down.  A man stopped to help her but while he was talking to her, another vehicle hit him and he was killed.  The woman had felt guilty ever since, but the man came through to Anne to tell the woman that it wasn’t necessary. 

It was during this meeting that Anne was told that the show was going to move to Spain, so it would run there and in Portugal concurrently.  All this was happening at the same time as Anne was trying to fulfil her other obligations back in the UK.  She had some pre-arranged spiritualist church tour dates for Scotland, where she is still popular today.  Anne is not a person to let others down, if she can avoid it.  She was due to fly from Edinburgh to Madrid, attend a meeting and fly back to Edinburgh the following day to finish her tour.  Unfortunately, this was at the time that the Icelandic volcano erupted, and all outward bound UK flights were grounded. 

The Portuguese rep contacted Anne and told her that she should drive to Spain, and that she would never work on television again if she didn’t.  The drive from Edinburgh to Spain is 23 hours, assuming you can make the connections at the right time.  It was impossible for Anne to do that; it would mean she’d miss some of her pre-booked Scottish appointments.  Anne kept getting ‘phone calls from the rep of the production team telling her that she was inflexible and unreliable.  She began to get verbally abusive towards Anne, swearing at her and telling her that she was unprofessional.  Anne was terribly upset by this, she hated letting people down.  Whichever way it went, someone was going to be disappointed.  The funny part was the Spanish company were actually ok about it all, they knew there were no flights and they were more than happy to re-schedule the meeting.

The meeting was re-scheduled, and on the way to the meeting, Anne and the Portuguese rep with her had a car accident.  Although they were not seriously hurt, Anne was a little shaken up.  The Portuguese rep told Anne that she was being tested because everyone really thought that she was a fraud and that she couldn’t keep up her “act.” 

Eventually, Anne met with the Spanish television company and production company reps.  The meeting was only meant to be for half an hour, but there were twelve people around the table, and almost all of them wanted Anne to give them a reading!  The company had wanted to use a Spanish medium until one of the senior people in the company had seen Anne work.  By the time the meeting ended, they unanimously only wanted to work with Anne.

Filming started in Spain and the reaction was phenomenal.  What Anne didn’t know when she started working in Spain was that all television audiences are paid.  It’s a job to people there, although not a well paid job, they only got about ten Euros a show.  At the second show, some of the audience had been drinking started to become disrespectful to Spirit.  Anne knew that her Spirit Guide was getting annoyed, and at the end of the show, through Anne, he gave one of the heads of the TV Company both barrels.  Anne’s Guide said he’d never been so humiliated before.  It was one of those occasions when Anne was completely taken over by her Guide. 

By now, the TV Company had over 10,000 people waiting to come to see the show.  They had received so many e-mails, their website had crashed.  Anne told the company that if they ever paid any member of the audience to attend one of her shows again, she wouldn’t do any more shows.  There was no need to pay the audience; they just wanted to be there and Anne only wanted people who wanted to be there.  The TV Company agreed to this.  As far as Anne is aware, this is the first time this has ever happened in Spain.

The show went from strength to strength, and the last set of shows for that series had been filmed.  Anne and the TV Company hadn’t talked about another series yet, as Anne’s father’s health was deteriorating and she wanted to be at home with her family.  She was still trying to be in too many places at one time: filming in Spain, filming in Portugal, doing private readings in both Spain and Portugal and still touring in England. 

By this time, things were getting bad in Portugal.  The production company was insisting that Anne signed a contract that was written in Portuguese, and she couldn’t understand it.  People started telling Anne that she would lose her powers.  Even though Anne knew that this was just rubbish because no medium has power, the power, if any, is with and remains with spirit, it was still very upsetting.

One night, Anne phoned a friend of hers, an entertainment artist manager, Sean Jeffrey  of JAM Artists.  She was sobbing her heart out as she asked him,

            “Do you know an entertainment lawyer that speaks Portuguese?” 

            He said, “I have just the person for you, and she’s in Lisbon.” 

            This was how Anne met her lawyer, Dr Dulce Rodrigues.  Dulce doesn’t watch television, and didn’t have a clue who Anne was, but they met and she agreed to act for Anne.  Anne felt very heartened by this, she had been told that Dulce was very selective about whom she would work with, but they hit is off straight away.  Anne told her everything, and showed her the contract that the company wanted her to sign.  Dulce explained that most of what had been going on was illegal. 

Anne had never signed a contract with the Portuguese company and the more she refused, the more the Portuguese production company rep pressurised and bullied her.  She refused to allow Anne to use the CDs with her company logo on when giving clients recordings of their readings, they had to be the ones with the production company’s name on.  She told Anne that she had to close all her social media accounts because she was being ridiculed by the press.  Anne refused to do this, because she has always replied to her fans.  The rep didn’t seem to understand that social media can be free advertising.  She also told Anne that she had to remove a photograph on her website in which she had been made up to look like a bird because people though she looked stupid.  Eventually, she started going to Anne’s apartment at night, trying to intimidate Anne; Anne eventually asked her to leave her apartment and not to visit again.  It got so bad that in the end Anne had to get a bodyguard. 

Keith, Anne’s husband flew out and her lawyer tried to re-negotiate the contract with the Portuguese company.  It was a tiny little office and all the Portuguese were smoking.  Neither Keith, Dulce nor Anne smokes and the smoke was so bad that it started to set Anne’s asthma off.  She had to leave the meeting room while Keith and Dulce remained. 

The production company’s lawyer began to get very aggressive and rude towards Anne, and she and Keith were finding it very frustrating.  He wasn’t listening to Anne and didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t about the money.  Anne just wanted to be treated with respect; she also already knew that the production company had other English mediums arranged so it wasn’t an issue for them if she did leave. 

Anne was being paid about 7000 Euros per show, but of course, was paying all her living expenses, both in England and in Portugal, out of that.  She later found out, when she had a meeting with the Spanish lawyers, that the TV company was also paying her Portuguese living expenses… Or so they thought.  Anne didn’t see that money, the production company rep got it all.  The TV Company was also being charged for Business Class flights when Anne was travelling by Easy Jet. 

Nobody from the Portuguese production company spoke to Anne.  She was literally picked up by one of the team, taken literally straight from the car without speaking to anyone, taken straight to the dressing room without speaking to anyone, and shut in the dressing room.  Then she would be taken downstairs, escorted, so that she didn’t speak to anyone, to get her make-up done, and escorted back upstairs to the dressing room to get dressed.

Anne had one more show to film with the Portuguese company, which she agreed she’d do, but said that after that, she wouldn’t work with the production company rep again.  Keith went back out to meet Anne at the end of the filming, and ensured that Anne had her own driver to pick her up and drop her off because by this time, Anne had started to get death threats.  Although they were anonymous, Anne felt sure she knew who was making them.  She went to stay with her lawyer and her family. 

In Spain, Anne’s dresser knew that there was something wrong, because of what she was hearing being said by the Portuguese production team.  So, she decided that when everybody went up to their rooms to get showered before going out to dinner, she would speak to Anne.  She went to Anne’s room and knocked on her door and asked what was wrong. Then she ‘phoned the man in charge of the Spanish production company and explained it all to him.  He went to see Anne at the hotel to find out what was going on.  He walked in and Anne burst into tears.  He took a young lady with him who spoke beautiful English, her name was Anais.  Anais did all the translations because Jose, the company head, didn’t trust his English to understand exactly what was going on.

Jose said,

     “Well, don’t worry we’ll make sure your safe while you are the studio.  You don’t have to worry, we had already realised that there is something going on, and that the atmosphere is not good.”

Jose told Anne that they were having a problem with this particular production team that came from Portugal; he said that they couldn’t justify what they the Portuguese company was charging. That’s when they started to find out that some of the things that were being charged for weren’t actually being received.  Like the business class travel and the amount of fees Anne was allegedly charging, but wasn’t getting.  So the Spanish production company then said that they would speak to the Spanish TV company, and try to sort things out.  The production company, Plural Spain, came out to England to meet with Anne and Keith, but not until after Anne had stopped working. The Portuguese production company, and the lawyer from Plural Spain came out to London and met Dulce, Keith and Anne the day before the snow came and shut everything down.  So they did their negotiations in the coffee shop of the hotel.  They sat in there and within a matter of minutes they had negotiated a contract for Anne to carry on working in Spain.  This contract ran until the contract was terminated by mutual agreement following all the negative press.

All this time, Anne’s father’s condition was getting progressively worse, and Anne had to decide where her priorities lay.

In October 2012, a Spanish newspaper called El Mundo published an article that claimed that Anne used a trick known as “cold reading.”  Basically, she was told information about the people for whom she did readings before she started to perform.  They’d been fed the information by a disgruntled former employee.  Soon after it was published in Spain, the story was picked up by other publications in Spain and in Portugal, and, eventually, by the Sunday People here in the UK. 

The Spanish contract was drawn to a close at the end of 2013 by Anne.  The Production Company wasn’t getting her any more work and it seemed silly to hold onto a contract where she was being tied in and couldn’t work anywhere else for a final 6 months.  It was a mutual agreement and they are still on excellent terms.  It only had a few months left to run anyway and was coming to a natural end.  All of the hoo-ha had happened by then, and she wasn’t working anywhere.

The impact on Anne was tremendous.  As a direct result of the lies told about her, Anne’s work almost completely dried up, and it has been like that for nearly two years.  She had staff which she employed in the UK which she has had to let go because she no longer has the income to cover their wages.  As well as the impact on Anne in the UK, some of the people working on the shows in Spain and Portugal lost their jobs.  Some were re-employed for a theatre tour, but that stopped midway through, when Anne had to withdraw because the theatre company kept cancelling shows at short notice and not notifying members of the public this was affecting Anne’s reputation even further, sadly the Spanish staff was made redundant again.  To Anne’s knowledge many of the team, and she herself, never received payment for at least the last 6 shows.  The theatre company has since gone out of business, leaving Anne and the others with no chance of gaining payment through the Spanish courts.

Anne Germain continues to do private readings in Portugal and Spain, despite the bad publicity.  She attended the Congress of Artes Divinatórias, in Bilbau – San Sebastian, in August as Principal Speaker and attended the Foro de las Ciencias Ocultas y Espirituales Congress Madrid in October as a Principal Guest Speaker.  She is in negotiations with a new Production Company about TV shows and also to undertake more Theatre Tour dates across Spain.