German Bishops Close down Sex Abuse Victim Hotline

Vatican Insider
January 18, 2013

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Stephan Ackermann

It was set up in February 2010 and was meant to encourage those who had suffered sex abuse in the Church to come forward. The hotline was apparently shut down due to lack of use

After the German Catholic Church stopped the KFN’s (Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen) study into the phenomenon of paedophilia in the Church because of a disagreement that arose between the two, on Thursday German bishops announced they were closing down the special hotline created as a first point of call for abuse victims.

Together with the study, the hotline was one of the key elements of the strategy for countering the paedophile priest scandal which exploded in Germany in 2010. The hotline was aimed at “encouraging victims to talk about their experiences of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.”

The hotline was initially meant to stay open until September 2011 but the project was extended several times, until it was finally shut down last December. The line was closed at the end of 2012 due to “a drop in the requests for advice sent” by post, online and via the telephone, a statement issued by the German Episcopate reads. There was no longer any reason to keep the hotline open.

When the hotline was closed, the German Episcopal Conference published all the figures. A total of 8465 messages were received, of which only 691 arrived in the last year. More than 300 people had registered form online assistance, while 600 had sent messages via the regular post. The Episcopate’s database gathered data on over 1824 cases of sex abuse mostly committed in the 50’s and 80’s.

From an analysis of the data it emerged that most paedophile priests “premeditatingly tried to gain the trust of minors they planned to abuse,” explained Mgr. Stephan Ackerman, the man in charge of supervising the response to the scandal. Consequences of the abuse include flashbacks, panic attacks, depression, alcohol and drug addiction and a lack of trust in the Catholic Church and men.

Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding the Church’s interrupted collaboration with the KFN continues. The centre’s director, Christian Pfeifferche criticised attempts by leaders of the Episcopate to censor the KFN’s work and even got the German Minister of Justice, Sabine, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on his side. The minister concluded it was necessary for the Church to open its archives to external experts once and for all.

“We have nothing to hide” the Archbishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl Lehmann said in response to the harsh criticisms by saying. Mgr. Ackermann assured German weekly Der Spiegel that the research project would be continued once the Church found a new collaboration partner.