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GERMANY-RELIGION-CATHOLIC-CHILDREN-ASSAULT
Catholic priests abused thousands in Germany: study
BERLIN, Sept 12, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – More than 3,600 children were sexually
assaulted by Catholic priests in Germany over nearly seven decades, local
media reported Wednesday, citing a study commissioned by the German Bishops
Conference.
The damning report, which Cardinal Reinhard Marx is to present officially
on September 25, deals another blow to the Church after clerical child abuse
has been uncovered worldwide.
According to the study, 1,670 clergymen in Germany committed some form of
sexual attack against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014, Spiegel Online
reported. Most of the victims were boys.
More than half were 13 years old or younger at the time of the abuse,
the study concluded after examining 38,000 documents from 27 German dioceses.
The study also noted that some records had been “destroyed or
manipulated”, warning therefore that the scale of the abuse may be even
greater.
Predator priests were often transferred to another location, with
information on their criminal history not provided to the new site.
Only one in three (566 out of 1,670 accused) were subject to disciplinary
hearings by the Church, and most got away with minimal punishment, said Die
Zeit weekly, also citing the report.
Of these, 154 cases ended with no penalty, while 103 closed with a
warning.
Only 38 percent of the accused were prosecuted by civil courts — on
complaints lodged by victims themselves or their families.
Over the last decade, several German Catholic institutions have revealed
cases of child sexual abuse, including an elite Jesuit school in Berlin which
admitted to systematic sexual abuse of pupils by two priests in the 1970s and
1980s.
Last year, a world-famous Catholic choir school in Germany, the
Regensburger Domspatzen school, revealed that more than 500 boys there
suffered sexual or physical abuse in what victims have likened to “prison,
hell or a concentration camp”.
BSS/AFP/RY/1750 hrs