German Catholic Church to own up to decades of child abuse

Germany’s Catholic Church was Tuesday due to confess to and apologise for thousands of cases of sexual abuse against children, part of a global scandal heaping pressure on the Vatican.

It will release the latest in a series of reports on sexual crimes and cover-ups spanning decades that has shaken the largest Christian Church, from Europe to the United States, South America and Australia.

In Germany alone, almost 3,700 minors were abused between 1946 and 2014, according to the report prepared by the German Bishops’ Conference, details of which were leaked to the media earlier this month.

Justice Minister Katarina Barley said the study was “shocking and probably just the tip of the iceberg”. She urged the Church to “take responsibility for decades of concealment, cover-ups and denials”.

Barley also called on the Roman Catholic Church to work with state prosecutors to bring every known case to justice, and to take steps to prevent more abuse, speaking to news weekly Der Spiegel.

The independent commissioner for child sex abuse issues, Johannes-Wilhelm Roerig, recommended state authorities step in to clear up the crimes and ensure victims get access to Church files and compensation.

The state “has a duty of care for all children, including those who are in the care of the Church”, he told the Sueddeutsche newspaper.

The German Bishops Conference was due to officially release the research paper, which it commissioned four years ago, at the start of a four-day meeting in the western city of Fulda.

A victims support hotline and a dedicated website with information will be put in place during the meeting.

The conference head, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, said earlier this month that bishops were “deeply depressed, shaken and ashamed before the reality of sexual abuse of minors within the Catholic Church”.

According to the study, 1,670 clergymen in Germany committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys, between 1946 and 2014, Spiegel Online reported.

It points to a pattern of priests who have taken the vow of celibacy and diocese staff abusing minors. They kept the victims quiet by intimidation, instilling guilt and using their own status as figures of authority and trust.

More than half of the victims were 13 years old or younger, the study concluded, after examining 38,000 documents from the 27 German dioceses.