Reprocessing
Criticism of how abuse is dealt with in the Protestant church
At the end of 2020, the Protestant Church commissioned a large study on sexual violence in the area of the EKD and Diakonie. But the results are still not available.
The federal government’s abuse commissioner, Kerstin Claus, told the dpa that in the Protestant church, too, for years the perpetrator had come before the victim protection. “Those affected were not treated with respect and on an equal footing, but were often treated as supplicants,” criticized Claus.
Results are not expected until the end of 2023 at the earliest
At the end of 2020, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) commissioned an independent study on sexual violence and other forms of abuse in the area of the EKD and Diakonie. Results of this so-called forum study are expected at the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024.
An EKD spokesman rejected the criticism that the Protestant Church is not yet as far along in coming to terms with it as the Catholic Church. “The comparison cannot be made like that,” said the spokesman in Hanover. Among other things, the forum study is more comprehensive than the MHG study on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church published in 2018. There is also, among other things, the independent central contact point Help for those affected (www.anlaufstelle.help).