The indictment against a Catholic priest in Cologne includes 118 allegations of child sexual abuse. Now the verdict will be pronounced. What joint responsibility does the church bear?
Cologne – In the abuse trial against a Catholic priest before the Cologne Regional Court, the verdict will be pronounced today. The public prosecutor has demanded 13 years in prison against him, the defense a maximum of eight years.
The 70-year-old has been charged with 118 crimes. He is said to have abused children and young people for many years. The youngest victim was a nine-year-old girl.
The priest allegedly forced children to have intercourse, oral sex and many other sexual acts. Other victims came forward during the trial, whereupon the charges were expanded and the priest was arrested. The court saw a risk of repetition.
That’s what the priest did
In the process that has been ongoing since November, it became clear that the priest always knew how to exploit a special relationship of dependency. For example, according to witnesses, he abused a girl who was homesick during a holiday camp. In another case, he gave the impression of wanting to take care of the daughter of an alcoholic mother.
As a hospital chaplain, he built up a special bond of trust with a family. In one case, the minister entered into a “therapy agreement” with parents for their allegedly irascible daughter. According to the indictment, he always used this to sexually abuse the girls.
Archdiocese of Cologne rejects guilt
Although allegations and rumors were repeatedly brought against the pastor to those responsible in the Archdiocese of Cologne, he was repeatedly given the opportunity to be alone with children. The Archdiocese even paid his legal fees after he was temporarily investigated. The investigation was initially discontinued because the pastor’s nieces withdrew their incriminating statements.
However, officials from the Archdiocese of Cologne have denied any joint responsibility in the process. “We acted consistently,” said Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, formerly head of human resources in Cologne, in his testimony.
Judge questions church
In the process, the presiding judge Christoph Kaufmann partly openly showed his irritation at the attitude of the Catholic authorities. He asked former church judge Günter Assenmacher, who had also been called as a witness, why he had not done his own research to get to the bottom of the case. He reproached him that it was difficult to uncover a case of abuse by leafing through the personnel file.
Assenmacher replied that further investigations were not his job. Assenmacher then repeatedly interspersed Latin phrases and terms into his statements. Kaufmann also read from a letter that Assenmacher had sent to a colleague in the archbishopric who had reminded him of the priest’s case. “I locked the documents in the poison cabinet here and completely lost sight of them,” the ex-canonical judge apologized at the time.
On another day of the trial, the presiding judge read a letter from a senior pastor in whose area of responsibility the defendant had worked. When he took up his post, he was not informed by the Archdiocese of the suspicion raised against the priest, the pastor wrote in his letter. On the contrary, he was told that it was a “well-ordered” model parish. dpa
#Judgment #abuse #trial #Catholic #priest