An independent report presented Monday (13) noted that over 75 years in the diocese of Münster, 610 children have been sexually abused by their religion, although the actual number of victims could reach 6,000.
According to the report prepared by five experts from the University of Münster in West Germany who analyzed cases of pedophilia between 1945 and 2020, 183 priests were involved in the event.
In total, 196 clergy were identified, accounting for more than 4% of the clergy in this diocese, and 90% of them were never prosecuted.
The report shows that an average of two acts of pedophilia per week were committed in this diocese during the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the study’s authors, Klaus Grosse Kracht, said the study reflects “an astonishing record”, denouncing the systematic cover-up of abuses.
Those responsible “remained quiet, kept quiet, and intervened only superficially when necessary to prevent public scandal,” he denounced.
According to another writer, Natalie Powroznik, the actual number of victims must be eight to ten times higher. She said “between 5,000 and 6,000 boys and girls” had been sexually abused.
The document adds to other work on the extent of pedophilia in the German Catholic Church since the end of the Second World War.
The sexual assault scandal within the Catholic Church has affected Germany and many other countries, with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in Bavaria seriously accusing him of being archbishop.
According to a report published in January, at least 497 people, mostly children and adolescents, were sexually assaulted between 1945 and 2019 in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising.
The author, a law firm, accused the honorary pope of being inactive in the face of this sexual violence and, in many cases, doing nothing to stop child abuse.
Benedict XVI reiterated that he never concealed acts of sexual aggression.
Another devastating report, released in March 2021, revealed that hundreds of young children were sexually abused in Cologne, the country’s largest diocese, between 1975 and 2018.
In 2018, several university researchers, funded by the Church but without access to archives, produced another report that revealed that at least 3,677 children were victims of sexual violence in Germany between 1946 and 2014.
source: Noticias
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