Heike Schmoll / When it comes to sexual abuse, the focus of attention is usually on the Catholic Church. But the abuse commissioner is not satisfied with the actions of the Protestant church either.
The German government’s independent commissioner for child sexual abuse, Kerstin Claus, has accused the Protestant Church of lagging behind the Catholic Church in coming to terms with the issue. In 2010, she said, the public focus was very much on the so-called abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. It was not until 2018 that the Commission for Coming to Terms with the Abuse Scandal, which is part of the Independent Commissioner, succeeded in clearly naming the deficits of the Protestant Church in public with the “Hearing Churches” and a case study presented there.
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The case study showed that there were also internal church structures in the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) “that favored abuse, and that acts were also covered up there,” Claus told the F.A.Z. At the latest after the hearing in 2018, this also forced the EKD to deal intensively with processing, both in the regional churches and in the diakonia. The synods in 2018 and 2019 were important stages in creating internal structures to deal with factors that promote abuse and to develop ways to counteract them.
Stronger focus on reappraisal in the Protestant church
According to Claus, the increased media interest and the associated visibility of those affected in the Protestant context have had a strengthening effect on the necessary processes in recent years. Increasingly, the actions or inactions of the Protestant church have also been perceived critically by the public. Two years ago, the Protestant church commissioned a similarly comprehensive study on sexual violence against children and adolescents, not least against this background, as the Catholic church did the MHG study in 2018.
The study should be available by the end of 2023, he said. “The results and the scientific recommendations will once again change the public, but also the internal church debate,” Claus said. From her point of view, the Protestant church could certainly have positioned itself more clearly and set out on its way, starting from the debate in 2010.
Thus, she said, it was once again those affected, their reports and the associated media resonance that made these processes possible. “In this respect, it is immensely important that the debate is also given a scientific quality and perspective in the Protestant context with the publication of the EKD study,” Claus affirmed.
the source used in the creation of the news: https://www.faz.net
