GERMANY
GlobalPost
Jessica Phelan
January 9, 2013
BERLIN, Germany — The Roman Catholic Church in Germany has called off an investigation into alleged sexual abuse by members of the clergy.
The independent inquiry was commissioned in 2011, in response to accusations of abuse at multiple Catholic schools across Germany….
A panel of retired prosecutors and judges, led by Professor Christian Pfeiffer of the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, was responsible for looking into the allegations against Church employees.
Pfeiffer told German newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Church officials had attempted to “censor” his team’s findings, seeking to control which results would be made public and to select which researchers were allowed to be involved.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told the paper that she had demanded an immediate explanation from the Church.
The Bishops’ Conference denies that it is failing to confront the issue and says it plans to commission a new abuse inquiry from a different team in the coming months.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.