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Munich / Cologne (dpa) - The law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl has rejected allegations of the Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki against the abuse report it prepared.
In a press release published on Friday, the Munich lawyers denied Woelki's accusation that the report had legal deficiencies and could therefore not be published.
The law firm offered Woelki to publish the report exclusively on its own homepage, «so that, in our opinion, there are no liability risks for the Archdiocese of Cologne.
We bear the sole and full responsibility for this. "
Woelki had commissioned the report from Westpfahl Spilker Wastl himself.
Independent lawyers should investigate how the Archdiocese has dealt with allegations of child sexual abuse by priests in the past.
After the report was ready, however, Woelki refused to publish it and commissioned a new report from a criminal lawyer in Cologne.
The lawyer commissioned by Woelki, Matthias Jahn, criticized the Munich report as “not legally binding” and “failed on the whole”.
Westpfahl Spilker Wastl denied this again on Friday and, conversely, accused Jahn of serious errors in his assessment.
The publication of the report is imperative “also because of the overriding public interest”.
It has already become known that today's Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Heße - formerly Head of Personnel in Cologne - is critically assessed in the report.
He denies the allegations.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210122-99-130055 / 3