Abuse scandal in the Catholic Church: expert exonerates Woelki

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The criminal lawyer Björn Gercke has accused today's Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Heße of eleven breaches of duty in connection with the processing of allegations of abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne.

In the case of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki from Cologne, Gercke and his team do not see any breaches of duty, however, most of the misconduct with Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died in 2017.

That's what Gercke and the lawyer Kerstin Stirner said on Thursday in Cologne when they presented their report.

Before his appointment to Hamburg, Heße was head of personnel and vicar general in the Archdiocese of Cologne.

In this capacity, he faced allegations of child sexual abuse by priests.

So far, Heße has denied the allegations made against him in a different context.

According to the opinion of the experts, eleven breaches of duty can be proven.

Cardinal Woelki said after the performance: “On the one hand, I longed for this day (…) and, as you can probably imagine, I feared this day like nothing else.” It has been known for years that “clergymen guilty ”, through breach of trust and violence.

Often there were no penalties, but "worse" is that those affected were "often not really taken seriously".

The handling of the incidents is partly a "cover-up".

The report is the "disappointing confirmation" of what "this word means".

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His predecessors were also guilty.

It is "no longer conceivable" that someone in high positions did not suspect anything.

He would “temporarily release two clergy from their duties with immediate effect”.

The expert opinion on dealing with sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne also showed that there were breaches of duty in 75 file cases dealing with reported cases of abuse.

Most violations - almost a third of all cases - concern the deceased Cardinal Meisner.

In connection with him, 24 breaches of duty from 14 files were found.

Six of these relate to the duty to provide information, nine to the duty to report and five to the duty to care for victims.

The violations are stored "in the full range" of the investigated breaches of duty.

No breaches of duty could be found in 212 files - due to the sometimes poor quality of the files, however, this does not mean that there were no breaches of duty in these cases.

"Significant deficiencies" in file management were found in some cases.

In some cases one got the impression that files were missing.

One suggests "urgently" to improve the filing and to adopt standards that "have been valid for a long time in secular places".

For this one also has to provide staff.

In addition, there was a lack of “protected whistleblower systems” and violations would have to be sanctioned - and the corresponding consequences would have to be clearly communicated in advance.

Around half of those affected were children under the age of 14

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Documents were submitted several times - either on request or on the initiative of church workers.

Files were destroyed at least twice during the investigation period.

This was part of the normal protocol according to canon law, but efforts were made to obtain information on the files concerned.

In the course of the investigation, "numerous" names were found - a total of 20 - that were not known to the intervention agency and were not on the lists submitted.

In addition, the report showed that 57 percent of the abused were male, 38 percent female.

For five percent there was no information.

More than half were children under the age of 14.

In around a quarter the abuse occurred in a private context.

A large part of the cases occurred before 1975 - outside the investigation period.

However, one examines the handling of those responsible, not the abuse case itself. Therefore, cases that were only later known or investigated were included, even if the cases had taken place outside the investigation period.

It was often found that "for decades no one dared to report these cases." There have been long periods of time in which no one reported suspected cases, although it is now known that there have been numerous cases.

In almost half of the cases, the accused and those affected were heard.

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In the course of the investigation, 243 accused and 386 affected persons were found - however, not all cases could be attributed to the expert opinion.

In some cases, for example, files were created for cases that the archbishopric was not responsible for assessing.

If these cases are excluded, there remained 202 suspects and 314 victims.

The assessment of the abuse allegations itself was not the subject of the report, explained Gercke.

It is also important that it is a legal opinion, not a sociological, historical, theological or criminological document.

The basis was primarily files, reports and protocols, as well as interviews and surveys, among others of ten people, where violations were considered.

Immediate perpetrators or accused or victims of abuse were not called in.

One sees oneself “expressly only as part of the enlightenment”.

"Great disappointment among those affected"

An earlier expertise had so far remained under lock and key due to alleged shortcomings and legal concerns.

The withholding of the first report had caused severe criticism from those affected, but also within the Catholic Church and from politics.

Because so many people wanted to quit the church, there were real queues in Cologne for appointments at the beginning of the year.

Shortly before publication, the pressure on the cardinal had increased further.

The spokesman for the “Eckiger Tisch” initiative, Matthias Katsch, said on Deutschlandfunk on Thursday that he was skeptical of the report.

Former Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse (SPD), who is also a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), called for radical clarification and consequences for the Catholic Church.

The representative of the German Bishops' Conference for questions of sexual abuse, the Trier bishop Stephan Ackerman, criticized Woelki's handling of the abuse allegations in his archdiocese produced "a great disappointment and irritation among those affected and the public".

According to Gercke, a copy of the report was forwarded to the Cologne public prosecutor's office on Wednesday.

Gercke said on Wednesday evening on WDR television that there had been a constant exchange with the law enforcement agency during the investigation phase in recent months.

The previously unpublished report by the Munich criminal law firm is also available to the Cologne public prosecutor's office.