Protestant Church in Germany: 9,355 victims of abuse – 3,500 accused

The Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) has received the results of a comprehensive abuse study with great dismay. She had "expected a lot from the study, but I was shocked by the overall picture", said Kirsten Fehrs, acting chair of the EKD Council, at the presentation in Hanover on Thursday. The church and its welfare organisation Diakonie had blatantly failed and had not done justice to those affected.

The study shows that there were many more victims of abuse than expected: According to "speculative" extrapolations, at least 9,355 children and young people have been sexually abused in Protestant churches and diaconal organisations since 1946. There are also 3,497 accused persons, a good third of whom are pastors or vicars.

Only one regional church provided personnel files

In its official press release, however, the EKD only mentions 1,259 accused and 2,174 affected persons. Co-author Harald Dreßing, who was also significantly involved in the 2018 Catholic MHG abuse study, explained the difference: despite a contractual obligation, only one of the 20 Protestant regional churches provided the personnel files in addition to the disciplinary files.

According to Dreßing, the additional analysis of the personnel files in the one smaller regional church showed that the disciplinary files did not include around 60 per cent of those accused and 70 per cent of those affected. Based on this data and empirical values from similar investigations, the figures are significantly higher (pages 585 to 731). However, this is also only "the tip of the iceberg"; it can be assumed that there is a very large dark field.

With regard to the victims, Fehrs said. "We did not protect them at the time of the offence and we did not treat them with dignity when they plucked up the courage to come forward." In church congregations and diaconal organisations, there was a tendency to look the other way. She pleaded in favour of a dark field study that would cover society as a whole.

The head of the study, Martin Wazlawik, explained that cases of abuse in the Protestant church have so far been insufficiently recorded and dealt with. The poor treatment of those affected was often due to the attitude that the Protestant church saw itself as the better one.

Representatives of those affected by abuse called for binding standards for the processing of abuse in the regional churches; they prevented clarification. Detlef Zander said that people were still being re-traumatised by their treatment of those affected. According to Katharina Kracht, the narrative that the Catholic Church is more affected by sexual abuse than the EKD is no longer tenable.

Buschmann: Better prevention

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) called on both churches to work towards clarification of cases of abuse, reparation and better prevention. He went on to say: "Church reappraisal is important - but it is no substitute for state prosecution where this is possible."

According to the study, around 64.7 per cent of victims were male and around 35.3 per cent female. The accused were almost exclusively men (99.6 per cent). Around three quarters of them were married at the time of the first offence. Most of the offences were so-called hands-on acts, i.e. offences involving physical contact - from unnecessary physical assistance in sports lessons to penetration.

The EKD commissioned the study a good three years ago at a cost of around 3.6 million euros. Those affected were also involved. The authors analysed around 4,300 disciplinary files, 780 personnel files and around 1,320 other documents. By comparison, around 38,000 personnel files were analysed in the 2018 MHG study by the Catholic German Bishops' Conference. (KNA)