Sexual violence occurred in the Protestant Church to a greater extent than previously assumed. A research team commissioned by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has presented its study, which reports at least 2,225 people affected and 1,259 suspected perpetrators. However, that is only the “tip of the tip of the iceberg”.
The acting council chairwoman of the EKD, Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, said: “The overall picture shocked me deeply.” The Church humbly accepts this study. As an institution, it has also been guilty of harming many people, it has structures that protect perpetrators, and it has blatantly failed to protect victims and deal with them. The study is a mandate to address the problem.
The so-called “ForuM” study is the first comprehensive study of sexualized violence in the Protestant Church and in diakonia. Files were made available to the research association for them. However, the scientists were not allowed to evaluate the personal files of all pastors and deacons, but primarily disciplinary files. They did not see cases that were covered up and not prosecuted for disciplinary action – the researchers clearly criticized on Thursday that the churches had not adhered to the agreements here.
Nevertheless, the authors of the study make an attempt to quantify the true extent of the abuse. They found 1,259 accused in the files – 40 percent of them are pastors, almost all of them male – and 2,174 victims. In only one of the 20 regional churches they were able to view not only the disciplinary files, but also all personnel files. The comparison showed that 57 percent of the accused and 74 percent of the victims do not appear in the disciplinary files at all, the study says. If you extrapolate this to the entire Protestant Church in Germany, you get almost 3,500 accused and more than 9,300 victims. However, these projections “must be viewed with great caution,” write the scientists.
So far, the EKD has counted 858 victims of sexual abuse – but these are only people who have also applied for recognition benefits.
The representative of those affected, Detlev Zander, now expects an “earthquake,” as he says. The illusion that large-scale cases of sexual violence only occurred in the Catholic Church is “no longer tenable as of today.” Zander is a member of the Sexual Violence Participation Forum in the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD); As a child and teenager he was abused in a Protestant home near Stuttgart.
“It shows again and again that the church is not a counterpart for those affected.”
The scientists attached great importance not only to collecting numbers from files, but also to talking a lot with those affected. Katharina Kracht, who, as she said, was abused by a married pastor as a teenager, was a member of the research association’s advisory board – and she complained that the regional churches were hindering research. So “perpetrators remained in the dark”. Kracht’s demand: “We need the state to assume responsibility here. Because it has been shown again and again that the church is not a counterpart for those affected.” They often ran into “rubber walls” with her.
Katharina Kracht, representative of those affected and member of the advisory board of the research association.
(Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa)
Hanover professor Martin Wazlawik, who coordinated the research project, advised the Protestant church to look honestly at itself and “stay less in the idealistic self-narrative.” For a long time she fooled herself into thinking that there couldn’t be a major problem of abuse because it was written in a participatory and democratic manner. Wazlawik accused her of “reactive processing” and said she almost never took action on her own initiative. Some structures are also problematic, such as the federal division into regional churches, which obscures responsibility and makes uniform standards more difficult – even if only when dealing with personnel files. The special position of Protestant pastors as authority figures and their rectory also encouraged abuse because the perpetrators could feel safe, as Wazlawik said.
The “ForuM” study was initiated and financed by the EKD in 2020. It should analyze typically Protestant structures that promote violence and abuse of power. As an umbrella organization of 20 regional churches, the EKD represents around 19 million Christians nationwide.
A comprehensive study on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was presented in 2018, the so-called MHG study. After evaluating almost 40,000 personnel files from the years 1945 to 2014, 1,670 Catholic priests and deacons were accused, to whom 3,677 children and young people could be assigned as those affected. The scientists called this “a lower estimate.” However, the two studies are hardly comparable – on the one hand because the Catholic Church submitted all the personnel files, so the data basis was different. On the other hand, the MHG study only examined the actions of priests, deacons and male religious. The “ForuM” study also looked at the employees of Diakonie, i.e. all church aid organizations in Germany, as well as volunteers in the Protestant regional churches.
With material from the news agencies dpa, epd and KNA