In the case of the Cologne diocesan priest Hans-Bernhard U., who was accused of sexually abusing minors, there is increasing evidence that the personnel managers of the Archdiocese of Cologne could have prevented further crimes if they had fulfilled their duties in 2010/11.

At that time, the clergyman was released from his official duties after an anonymous tip about investigations by the Cologne public prosecutor's office, but was reinstated in his old position as a hospital chaplain and employee in a parish in Wuppertal after the proceedings were discontinued.

Daniel Deckers

responsible for “The Present” in the political editorial department.

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In the meantime, the clergyman had neither been subjected to a psychiatric evaluation, as stipulated by the Church's guidelines for dealing with cases of sexual abuse, which have been in force since 2002, nor were the personnel managers around today's Hamburg Archbishop Stefan Hesse interested in the living conditions of the accused - And this despite the fact that U. allegedly molested three underage nieces over the years and the Cologne public prosecutor's office only dropped the investigation in spring 2011 because the girls, under family pressure, had exercised their right to refuse to give evidence.

This constellation was just as well known to Hesse and his collaborators as the fact that U., despite the ban on exercising priestly activities,

had already become active again as a pastor in the spring of 2011.

According to the relevant files available to the FAZ, it did not occur to them to intervene.

In January, when he was questioned as a witness in the main hearing against U., which began after a renewed complaint by the three nieces in the Cologne district court last November, Hesse did not show any guilt.

Greater scale of deeds

However, it became clear on Wednesday that the extent of the crimes that the accused is accused of exceeds the number of offenses initially charged many times over.

Prosecutor Maurice Niehoff read out an additional indictment in which a total of 85 acts of abuse from the years 2002 to 2018 were discussed.

They were committed at all of the clergyman's places of residence, from Gummersbach and Wuppertal to Zülpich, all of them on a total of nine girls aged between less than 14 and over 18, sometimes over several years.

In some cases, the pedophile, who was trained in supervision, took advantage of the trust that both children and parents placed in him as a pastor and friend of the family - even to the point of securing a "therapy contract" for a pubescent girl.

In other instances, he acted with knowledge of the social and emotional plight of girls, which he found at an Open House (HoT) that he frequented.

Mostly during overnight stays, the now 70-year-old clergyman subdued the adolescents, some before puberty, using methods that brought tears to the eyes of other victim witnesses who were present in the courtroom.

The accused, who was arrested in court at the end of January because of the risk of a repeat offence, and taken into custody on remand, followed the reading of the supplementary charge without any emotion.

With his head bowed and his defense attorney Rüdiger Deckers turned, he did not look at the co-plaintiffs who were present at the hearing.

The presiding judge of the youth protection chamber of the district court, Christoph Kaufmann, did not start the day of the hearing with the reading of the supplementary charge.

Kaufmann used the high level of interest in this step of the process to first read out a statement from a clergyman who, as a young pastor, had been transferred to Wuppertal in 2012 and thus to Hans-Bernhard U.’s environment.

Torsten Kürbig, who now lives as a school chaplain in the Rhineland, had voluntarily admitted to the public prosecutor that those responsible in Cologne - in addition to the former head of human resources Stefan Hesse as well as the current Cologne auxiliary bishop Ansgar Puff as his successor - had pretended to him that he come to a place where everything is "in the best order".

From the preliminary investigation or the suspension of U.

According to the priest, Hesse did not report anything to him.

Puff, in turn, recently assured him that his predecessor had not informed him about "special cases" that required special attention.

The priest was also certain that other clergymen in Wuppertal had already become aware of U.'s alleged cross-border behavior in the open door in 2009 without informing the personnel department in Cologne or even him.

Kürbig's statements to the public prosecutor's office led to the statement that, based on the media reports and the testimony of a witness from Wuppertal, he was "more convinced than ever that those responsible could have prevented further crimes after 2010 at the latest and in the light of 2009".