Bild
March 9, 2010
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2010/03/09/regensburg-cathedral-choir-scandal/popes-brother-georg-ratzinger-asks-for-forgiveness.html
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| Georg Ratzinger, the brother of Pope Benedict XVI. |
The Pope’s brother Georg Ratzinger has asked for forgiveness after reports of the abuse which went on at the boarding school of the Cathedral choir in Regensburg.
Germany has been shocked by the scandal surrounding the world-famous choir. Victims were forced to endure excessive force, including violence, whipping and perverse sex games from teachers and even headmasters.
Many of them are still suffering today.
One of the victims, Manfred van Hove, told how the former boarding school master kept a 'boy harem'.
And now Ratzinger (86), brother of Pope Benedict XVI and former leader of the choir, has again spoken up and apologised.
“The scale of these brutal methods was not known to me. Today we condemn it all the more because we have become more sensitive.
"I have also done this. At the same time I ask the victims for forgiveness,” he told the 'Passauer Neuen Presse' (PNP).
Physical punishment used to be quite common. Even Ratzinger himself, who was Regensburg choir master between 1964 and 1994, “gave out slaps repeatedly at the beginning, but actually always had a guilty conscience for it".
Ratzinger said that slapping was simply a way of reacting to bad behaviour or disobedience. He was pleased when physical punishment became illegal in 1980. He was “secretly relieved”.
Other teachers obviously didn’t have such misgivings – quite the opposite, in fact.
That was the case with the former headmaster of the boarding primary school in Etterzhausen, Johann M. (†1992). Ratzinger admitted that he knew “very hard slaps” were being given out, and that he thought this shouldn’t have continued.German magazine 'Spiegel' reported of “cruel rituals”. Johann M., a Catholic priest, allegedly gave the harshest punishments. He apparently often called eight- and nine-year-old children to his living quarters and beat them there naked.
In a few cases there was even penetration, according to a victim.
But what did the headmaster’s colleagues know?
Ratzinger acknowledged that pupils told him how things were at Etterzhausen on concert tours. “But their reports would not be given to me in such a way that I believed something had to be done,” the former choir master told PNP.
In any case there was little he could have done as the primary school was an “independent institution".
Ratzinger also stressed again that he did not have any knowledge of sexual abuse in the choir or the boarding school.
He was very surprised when he heard of the allegations “because these cases from the late 50s and 50s belong to a long-ago past”.
Ratzinger added: “I am very sorry for the victims, who were hurt physically and mentally.”
Abuse was never even an issue: “No, it never came up in conversation.”
He also said he knew nothing of the allegations against former boarding school master Friedrich Z.
But producer and composer Franz Wittenbrink, who was at the Regensburg Cathedral choir boarding school until 1967, believes that the school staff did have some knowledge: In the school an “elaborate system of sadistic discipline connected to a sexual lust” was in existence, according to ‘Spiegel’.
In the evenings, Friedrich Z. “selected two, three of us boys in the dormitory, who he took to his flat”.
There the priest gave the youngsters red wine and masturbated with them.
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