BishopAccountability.org
	German Prosecutor Weighs Charges Against Priest By Katrin Bennhold and Nicholas Kulish New York Times March 24, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25church.html MUNICH, Germany — As new accusations of sexual abuse emerged, the Munich prosecutor's office said on Wednesday that it was weighing criminal charges against a priest at the center of the child-molestation scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. Father Peter Hullermann, whose transfer in 1980 to an archdiocese led at the time by Pope Benedict XVI has drawn the pope himself into the child abuse controversy, is accused of molesting an additional minor in 1998 — the most recent accusation to date. The latest revelation, made public by the archdiocese in Munich Wednesday, comes as church officials in northern Germany say they have "credible evidence" of at least two other cases of sexual abuse committed by Father Hullermann in the 1970s. The accusations — covering a period from his first assignment as a chaplain in Bottrop to one of his last stops in Garching an der Alz — point toward a pattern of abuse over two decades. During that time, church officials repeatedly transferred Father Hullermann to new parishes and allowed him to work with children, even after a 1986 conviction for sexually abusing boys. Father Hullermann has not returned repeated calls to his cell phone and hung up without comment when briefly reached Wednesday. The archbishop at the time of his transfer to Garching, Friedrich Wetter, apologized on Tuesday for allowing him to work in a parish there. His predecessor, Benedict, has not addressed the German scandal directly, even as he issued an apology to victims of abuse in Ireland Saturday. So far, no cases have emerged from the two-year period when Father Hullermann worked at St. John the Baptist Church in Munich and Benedict was archbishop. But accusations have now surfaced at every other stop between his ordination in 1973 and his criminal conviction in 1986. In a statement Wednesday, the Munich archdiocese said the most recent potential victim had contacted the church official dealing with local abuse cases, Monsignor Siegfried Kneissl. "The case has not yet passed the statute of limitations and the likely victim was a minor at the time," the statement said, noting that the case had been referred to the prosecutor's office. "We are currently investigating the circumstances of the case; I can't say more at this time," said Eduard Mayer, the head of the prosecutor's office handling the matter. Church authorities have been alerted to two previously unknown potential victims in the northern town of Bottrop. "We have two tip-offs that are so conclusive that we must proceed under the assumption that these incidents took place," said Ulrich Lota, spokesman for the diocese in Essen, where Father Hullermann was ordained. Mr. Lota said that he could not provide additional details because the people who had come forward had requested confidentiality, but confirmed that in both cases the victims were boys. Father Hullermann was abruptly transferred from Bottrop to Essen in 1977, but according to Mr. Lota there are no references in his file to abuse from that time. Two years later, however, three sets of parents told the priest in charge of Father Hullermann's new church that he had abused their children, prompting his transfer to Munich for therapy, where he was immediately returned to parish duties. After just over two years in Munich he was transferred once again, this time to the nearby town of Grafing. There he abused several boys, ultimately leading to his conviction in 1986, which resulted in a suspended sentence of five years probation and a fine. He then spent one year working in a nursing home before he was sent to a parish in Garching. In his statement Tuesday, Father Wetter asked victims and their family members for forgiveness for allowing Father Hullerman to transfer to Garching during his tenure. "I am now painfully aware that I should have made a different decision at the time," said Father Wetter, who stepped down as archbishop in 2007. The mayor of Garching, where Father Hullermann worked for 21 years after his 1986 conviction, said that the apology had come "awfully late." Mayor Wolfgang Reichenwallner said that town officials had not been informed by the church about Father Hullermann's repeated transgressions. "If this turns out to be true I would be deeply disappointed," said Mr. Reichenwallner. Father Wetter said he had "overestimated a person's ability to change and underestimated the difficulties of therapeutic treatment for people with pedophile tendencies." The Munich archdiocese, in its initial statement on Father Hullermann's case earlier this month, said that in addition to the relatively mild sentence he received "the statements of the treating psychologist" were decisive in his return to parish duties. However, Dr. Werner Huth, the psychiatrist who treated Father Hullermann from 1980 to 1992, told The New York Times last week that from the very outset he had repeatedly warned church officials not to allow the priest to work with children ever again. Dr. Huth contributed his evaluation of Father Hullermann to the expert opinion presented to the court for his trial in 1986. In it, he said, "I consider it, however, impossible to let Mr. Hullermann ever again work with young people."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.