By Matt Hermann
Deutsche Welle
March 30, 2010
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5410307,00.html
GERMANY -- After a torrent of sex abuse allegations, Germany's Catholic Church is opening a nationwide hotline to deal with the clerical sex abuse scandal.
In response to a growing number of sex abuse allegations, the Catholic Church in Germany is launching a nationwide telephone hotline this Tuesday to offer support and counseling to those impacted by the scandal.
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| Victims as well as perpetrators can call the new hotline. |
The hotline is the church's response to a spate of revelations of sexual abuse and physical cruelty by clerics and parochial school teachers in recent months. So far more than 150 cases of sexual abuse in Catholic institutions in Germany have been reported.
Last week, Germany appointed a special ombudsman to receive and investigate allegations of sexual molestation dating from the 1950s in Catholic and other private schools.
The special representative of the German Bishops' Conference for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Bishop Stephan Ackermann, is set to introduce the hotline on Tuesday in Trier.
Consultants and chaplains will be available to speak with victims as well as perpetrators.
The organization "We are Church," has been running a sexual abuse hotline for victims of the Catholic Church since 2002, when the cases of priest abuse in the US first came to light.
Unlike the holtine proposed by the German Bishops' Conference, the "We are Church" hotline is independent from the church heirarchy, and victims speak to lay counselors rather than members of clergy.
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