Germany's Catholic Church Ambivalent about Pedophilia

When the mother of two teenagers went to a health resort, she decided to leave her two children in the care of the southern German priest she trusted.

The children liked him; he had a computer and video games they could play with. And as she later found out, he also had almost 60 cases of sexual abuse of children behind him.

In 1999, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.

He was caught, but not due to the church’s diligence. In this and many other cases, the German church has mostly kept quiet about cases of pedophilia. It is only when those cases come to glaring light that the church breaks its wall of silence, as it has had to in the following cases.

1993

: a 44-year-old priest from the state of Hessen is convicted of sexually abusing two sisters.

1995

: a priest from Hildesheim admits to inappropriate behaviour with several underage boys.

1996

: a 65-year-old priest from the town of Haren is sentenced for 225 cases of abuse.

1999

: a priest from southern Germany is sentenced to three and a half years after being convicted of 59 cases of abuse.

2000

: a 60-year-old priest from the Coburg area is put on two years probation for sexual abuse. One victim’s father had come forward during a church service and publicly accused the priest of pedophilia.

Keep It Private

Germany’s Catholic Church has been as reluctant as its sister church in the US to make sexual abuse problems public, preferring to deal with the issue internally, or as many now say, not deal with it at all.

Critics accuse the church of moving pedophile priests between parishes instead of dismissing them. A priest from the town of Krefeld was sentenced in 1994 to four years in jail for abusing a nine-year-old boy. Now the man works in the church archives in the western city of Aachen. The boy he molested still has seen no compensation from the church.

Part of the problem, according to some, is that there is no clear line of responsibility within the German church regarding how to deal with sexual abuse. German bishops often say problems are the responsibility of the individual diocese, whereas many a diocese refers any pedophilia case to the bishop level. It is easier to pass on the problem than to confront it.

High-Level Meeting

Saying it wished to clear up any confusion and set guidelines on how to deal with paedophile priests, Germany’s Bishop’s Conference made sexual abuse the theme of the regular meeting of its council on Monday.

But at the end of the day, the bishops could not come to agreement on regulations regarding abuse cases or guidelines. Cardinal Karl Lehmann, head of the Conference, said the German Catholic Church would continue to handle sexual abuse cases internally and "discretely" and leave responsibility to each diocese.

"We don’t want to cover anything up," Lehmann said, "but we’re not talking about the tip of the iceberg here."

The Cardinal from Mainz went on to say that the church would reserve the right to carry on its own investigations before involving district attorneys and that a church commission would be responsible for determining the criteria for a case of pedophilia.

"I think we all know what the criteria for pedophilia are," said Annegret Laakmann, spokeswoman for We Are the Church, an international church reform movement.

"Nothing came out of this meeting," she said, "even though it was a good opportunity to start putting changes in place. It’s clear the church still wants to cover things up."

Demands for Reform

Her group has demanded that the church put ombudsmen in place to whom children of their parents can report cases of abuse or inappropriate behaviour.

"Such a person needs to be completely independent of the bishops or the priests," Laakmann said, "only then can children or adults feel safe to report abuse."

We Are The Church

also wants the church to rethink its position on human sexuality. Only when the church starts seeing sexuality in a positive light and eliminates the celibacy requirement will the danger of abuse start to recede, according to the 2.3 million-strong organisation.