In the diocese of Hildesheim there is no further evidence that the former bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen became sexually violent towards children or young people.
As the former Lower Saxony Minister of Justice Antje Niewisch-Lennarz (Greens) and the former Chief Public Prosecutor Kurt Schrimm (Stuttgart / Ludwigsburg) stated on Tuesday in Hildesheim, when an abuse report was presented in Hildesheim, it could not be determined with certainty whether the corresponding allegations against the bishop, who died in 1988, were true .
Daniel Deckers
in the political editorial department responsible for “The Present”.
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In 2015 and 2018, two men independently accused Bishop Janssen of serious assaults.
In addition, it was suggested that there were perpetrator networks around the Hildesheim cathedral courtyard.
None of these allegations could be corroborated in the course of the investigations begun in April 2019, neither through calls to share possible knowledge, nor through questioning potential witnesses, nor through detailed study of personal or home files, if any.
“Massive injustice” in children's homes
Incidentally, the experts' findings on dealing with suspects and those affected by sexual violence match the picture that has emerged in all relevant studies since 2018. The care of the diocese leadership was always aimed at the perpetrator, who had to be protected from prosecution by cover-up and transfer. If clergy were convicted, they could usually continue to work unscrupulously in new places of work. Those affected, on the other hand, were ignored or silenced.
For the first time, a bishopric-wide investigation focused in detail on some Catholic children's homes.
At these crime scenes, the experts found “massive injustice” in the form of physical, psychological and sexualised violence.
Until recently, Catholic institutions hardly differed in this from homes run by other sponsors.
Three years after the publication of the MHG study on sexual violence, the German Bishops' Conference (DBK ) not before.
Bishop Heiner Wilmer, who has been in office since 2018, has only announced one.
In Hildesheim, there is also a lack of a processing commission and an advisory board for those affected, as agreed between the Bishops' Conference and the Independent Commissioner for Issues of Child Sexual Abuse (UBSKM), Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, in June 2020.