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German report details widespread and ongoing clerical child sex abuse
Study finds evidence of nearly 4,000 cases of abuse, and says it ‘continues to take place’
Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 19:17
Derek Scally in Berlin
Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, who was appointed head of German Catholic efforts to investigate the scale of abuse in church ranks, described the results as “depressing and shameful for us”. File photograph: Torsten Silz/AFP/Getty Images
German researchers have uncovered evidence of at least 3,677 cases of clerical physical and sexual abuse in the German church over seven decades.
A 350-page report, due to be presented later this month but leaked on Wednesday, found the most recent cases date from 2010. This suggests that abuse of minors by Catholic clerics in Germany is in no way a “historical phenomenon but . . . continues to take place”.
The study covers 38,000 church files from 27 German dioceses, with indications that 1,670 German clerics abused mostly young boys, up to a half under 13 years old at the time. The vast majority of victims had contact with clergy in a religious or pastoral context and over half – 969 – were altar boys.
The number of collated abusers corresponds to 4.4 per cent of active religious – rising to 5.1 per cent among parish priests. But the authors warned that “this represents a low estimate”.
Weeks after the Philadelphia grand jury report uncovered decades of clerical abuse, and a papal visit to Ireland dominated by its abuse legacy, the German abuse report uncovered about 600 incidents of statutory rape.
In echoes of Ireland, researchers found that many priests facing accusations were moved without their new parish being informed of the circumstances.
By doing so, German bishops had “recklessly or consciously accepted” the related risk to children in new parishes, the authors of the report said.