When children are abused within one's own family, this sometimes goes undetected for years.
For this reason, the Independent Commission on Coming to terms with Child Sexual Abuse presented a study on sexual violence in the family since 1945 in Berlin on Tuesday.
A total of 870 reports from people aged 16 to 80 years were evaluated for the study.
Most of the reports came from middle-aged people who had been molested in their childhood.
The results show: 87 percent of the perpetrators are men, 89 percent of the victims are girls and female adolescents.
Rape, but also abusive contact, were rated as abuse.
Almost half of the 1153 reported perpetrators (48 percent) were biological fathers, foster fathers and stepfathers, followed by other male relatives.
Ten percent of the perpetrators were mothers who often tolerated the abuse.
Violence is not a private matter
A fundamental problem is that, on the one hand, abusive behavior is not recognized. On the other hand, people close to abusive families would often not dare to intervene - even if the victim spoke of the abuse. This applies to relatives and friends, but also to socio-educational specialists from the youth welfare offices. "There was and is a great reluctance to interfere with the family," said the chairwoman of the commission and author of the study, Sabine Andresen, on Tuesday.
The aim of the study is therefore to create social awareness so that victims dare to seek help - but outsiders also recognize that violence is not a private matter and should intervene. The SPD politician Angela Marquardt, who sits on the Commission’s Affected Council, emphasized that, compared to abuse cases in the church and in sport, there has so far been no lasting debate about abuse in families. The study aims to help change this.