Catholic Church Sets up Hotline in Germany for Abuse Victims, Earth Times, February 25, 2010

Catholic Church Sets up Hotline in Germany for Abuse Victims

Earth Times
February 25, 2010

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/311275,catholic-church-sets-up-hotline-in-germany-for-abuse-victims.html

Freiburg, Germany - The Catholic Church in Germany said Thursday it was setting up a telephone hotline for victims of sexual abuse by church staff and would create a national office to review a rash of recent claims. Bishops meeting in the southern city of Freiburg said they would drop the current arrangement where each of the 27 dioceses reviews complaints, and appoint Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier to manage all complaints nationwide.

Apart from a flurry of allegations that led to a set of guidelines in 2002, the 27-million-member Catholic Church in Germany had previously escaped the controversy over abuse that has strained the church in the United States and Ireland.

But last month more than 100 people told a church-appointed lawyer they had suffered sexual molestation while pupils from the 1960s to 1980s at schools in Germany run by the Jesuit order of priests. That prompted more revelations.

The emergency hotline will be available to anyone who been attacked. The new office dealing with the issue will be in Bonn.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who angrily clashed this week with a government minister who criticized the Catholic Church for using its own legal system to deal with the issue, said in Freiburg the 2002 guidelines would be reviewed by August.

The church has been repeatedly criticized round the world for moving men who have already been accused of paedophile abuse to new positions where they again come into contact with children and teenagers.

Zollitsch said the guidelines would be altered to give more attention to preventing sexual abuse recurring.