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	German Diocese Files Criminal Complaint against Priest By Nicholas Kulish The New York Times April 9, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/world/europe/10germany.html A German diocese said Friday that it had filed a criminal complaint against a Roman Catholic priest for sexually abusing minors in the 1980s and ’90s. The 61-year-old priest was accused of sexually assaulting four boys between 1980 and 1996. The pastor, identified only as Father Ernst W., confirmed the charges against him when questioned by church officials, according to a statement Friday by the Diocese of Erfurt, in central Germany. Despite the fact that church officials were aware of one of the sexual abuse allegations against him, the priest was allowed to work in a juvenile detention facility from January 2004 to August 2006, without informing the authorities of his history. “The Diocese of Erfurt takes responsibility for this incorrect decision,” it said in the statement. There is no evidence that youths were abused at the Ichtershausen detention facility, church and state officials said. The facility generally holds minors and young adults between the ages of 14 and 24. State officials reacted with disappointment to the news that the church had knowingly placed a priest with problems with minors in the incarceration center. “At the moment it is a matter of crucial importance to restore the confidence that has been shattered by negligence in the investigation of alleged abuses and the necessary prevention of misconduct,” Dietmar Herz, state secretary at the ministry, said in a statement Friday. “The now mutually agreed approach of an unreserved investigation and improved prevention is also in the particular interest of the pastors,” Mr. Herz added. In August 2006, the priest was relieved of his duties at the juvenile facility and at an adult prison where he also worked for violating rules, according to the justice ministry in the German state of Thuringia. The infractions were not of a sexual nature, the ministry said. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the city of Muhlhausen, about an hour’s drive from Erfurt, confirmed that the church had sent the complaint, a two-page fax, to prosecutors on Thursday afternoon. “We are examining the complaint to determine whether to open criminal proceedings,” said the spokesman, Dirk Germerodt. Most of the recently revealed sexual abuse cases in Germany, where a growing scandal has damaged the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church, have not been eligible for prosecution because of the statute of limitations, which extends until 10 years after the victim’s 18th birthday. Since January, hundreds of cases of sexual abuse connected to the church in Germany have come to light, some dating back to the 1950s. The scandal has even drawn in Pope Benedict XVI, who has come under fire over his handling of an abusive priest who was moved to the Munich archdiocese in 1980 while Benedict was archbishop there. Benedict also has drawn criticism over the handling the case of an American priest who abused as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin, which was reviewed by the office he headed at the Vatican before he was named pope. But the cases in Erfurt are relatively recent. Mr. Germerodt said one of the boys was younger than 14 at the time of the abuse, and all four were under 18. The church said there was no evidence of sexual transgressions by the priest since 1997. He was recently suspended from his duties as a chaplain in a retirement home in the Diocese of Wurzberg for the duration of the investigation by prosecutors and an internal church investigation. The church investigation is on hold until state authorities are finished with their inquiry, the spokesman for the Erfurt Diocese, Peter Weidemann, said Friday.
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