Sydney Morning Herald 

March 30, 2010 - 5:49AM 

AFP  A German Roman Catholic diocese says 20 of its current and former priests have been accused "in recent weeks" of sexual abuse as a scandal embroiling the Church widened. 

The Trier bishopric in the west of the country said on Monday the "shocking" allegations involved crimes committed from the 1950s to 1990.

 "For my part, I would like to encourage those victims who have not yet found the courage to come forward to do so," Bishop Stephan Ackermann told reporters, saying he was "stunned" by the cases that had come to light. 

Ackermann said two people had already reported their cases to authorities while the Church had passed on information on an additional three to prosecutors. 

Ten of the accused priests have since died, another two have retired. 

Ackermann said the diocese was still conferring on how to handle three cases that fell under the criminal statute of limitations. 

He said that beyond the new cases that had surfaced, three priests had been convicted of abuse in the 1990s. 

Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office in the central city of Fulda confirmed sexual abuse charges had been filed against a former priest who had worked in nearby Erfurt. 

It said the man had been previously charged with pedophilia but declined to provide further details. Germany's Catholic Church has been thrown into crisis in recent weeks as dozens of people have come forward alleging they were abused as minors by priests. Most cases date back several years. 

Similar scandals have also erupted in the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, while Ireland has been rocked by revelations about cover up efforts by the head of the Church there in the 1970s. 

The Vatican has said it received 3000 reports between 2001 and 2010 of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy committed over the past 50 years. 

© 2010 AFP

Gulf Times

29 March 2010 

DPA/AFP/Berlin  

Several Catholic bishops in Germany begged for forgiveness yesterday for past sex abuse by paedophile priests, saying that the hundreds of cases were a “shocking” judgment on the church. 

For days, as the scandal has widened in Germany and the US, bishops have been issuing previously unpublished tallies of molestation in the period from 1950 to 1990, and reporting more recent cases to police. 

As hundreds of priests listened in his cathedral in Muenster, bishop Felix Genn asked victims for forgiveness for these “appalling attacks” and said the church had suffered major damage and lost face. 

Bishop Gebhard Fuerst of Rottenburg led prayers of penitence in his cathedral, saying: “The structures of our church allowed this to be kept out of sight and our leaders to carelessly ignore guilt.” 

He said the church had to learn to be alert to prevent molestation happening again. 

Some Germans have decided to formally resign from the church because of the scandal. Officials in the metropolis of Munich said that they had received 1,339 formal resignations in the period March 1-26, sharply up from the 941 who had resigned in March 2009. 

Typical of the rush of new cases was a complaint in the central town of Fulda that a priest had groped a young girl in a church office in 2000. Police said they had opened an investigation. 

Germany’s 27 bishops have appointed Stephan Ackermann, bishop of Trier, to investigate a stream of new complaints about sex abuse. 

The Trier bishopric in the west of the country said yesterday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused “in recent weeks” of sexual abuse. 

The diocese said the allegations involved crimes committed from the 1950s to 1990. 

“For my part, I would like to encourage those victims who have not yet found the courage to come forward to do so,” Ackermann told reporters, saying he was “stunned” by the cases that had come to light. 

He said that two people had already reported their cases to authorities while the church had passed on information on an additional three to prosecutors.  

Ten of the accused priests have since died, another two have retired. 

Ackermann said the diocese was still conferring on how to handle three cases that fell under the criminal statute of limitations. He said that beyond the new cases that had surfaced, three priests had been convicted of abuse in the 1990s. 

Meanwhile the prosecutor’s office in the central city of Fulda confirmed sexual abuse charges had been filed against a former priest who had worked in nearby Erfurt. It said the man had been previously charged with paedophilia. 

The Local – Germany’s news in English

Published: 28 Mar 10 11:14 CET

Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100328-26169.html

Nearly the entire board of the Odenwaldschule progressive boarding school in Hesse have resigned following the exposure of a long-neglected history of child sex abuse there.

The abuse scandal emerged as part of the wave of such child abuse horrors being unearthed across Germany that are largely, but not exclusively connected with Catholic church institutions.

It became public about three weeks ago that abuse claims had been made about ten years ago, relating to the period between 1966 and 1991 but had not been systematically investigated and then ignored.

The school has mentioned claims from 33 victims concerning eight teachers, although Der Spiegel magazine says the numbers are 40 victims and ten teachers.

Former head of the school Gerold Becker, who was in charge between 1972 and 1985, has been accused of being particularly involved in the abuse.

Accounts by former pupils say that some teachers at the school in Heppenheim woke them by stroking their genitals, forced them to perform oral sex, and were made into "sex slaves" for whole weekends.

Teachers also beat their wards, provided them with drugs and alcohol, and did not intervene when several pupils sexually abused a girl.

Now in a decisive move which will increase pressure on other institutions where such claims of abuse have been made, five of the seven members of the school’s board have stepped down.

The previous board, “neglected a number of things in the past,” said Philipp Sturz, spokesman for the school’s operating association.

“This school became a culpable institution,” he said, adding that those responsible had not listened properly to the children making claims of having been abused.

The Odenwaldschule was established in 1910 with a holistic ethos of raising a child according to its own individual desires, rather than through discipline and drill.

The 225 pupils currently attending (200 as boarders) live in so-called 'families,' with their class teacher as a kind of 'family head' who lives in an adjacent room. A boarder's place at the school currently costs €2,220 a month.

Famous alumni include French-German politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit, journalist and television presenter Amelie Fried and author Klaus Mann.

thesundaily.com

28 March 2010

Heppenheim (Germany)

Most of the board of a prestigious private German boarding school resigned on Saturday after revelations that at least eight teachers had pressed pupils into sex more than two decades ago.

The revelations of the past abuse at the non-religious school have come out at the same time as Catholic institutions in Germany, the United States and Ireland have confronted a similar poisoned legacy.

Past pupils of the Odenwald School near the southern town of Heppenheim include European Parliament member Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the late German writer Klaus Mann. Five of the seven-member board formally resigned Saturday as they had promised to do this week.

Ex-pupils have demanded a purge at the 100-year-old school which is run by a non-profit corporation without church links.

Only the school principal Margarita Kaufmann and the general manager, Meto Salijevic, remained in office after the meeting. The school says 33 ex-pupils report they were sexually abused in the period 1966-91.

Philipp Sturz, one of 30 trustees of the non-profit group, declined to confirm a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel that 40 ex-pupils had made complaints and two more ex-teachers had been named.

Much of the current sex-abuse scandal has focused on the Catholic Church, and the employment of a convicted paedophile priest in 1980 in Munich when Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was archbishop.    

Secular and Protestant groups have admitted they also failed in that era to adequately police paedophile attacks on children in care. - dpa

Updated: 10:57AM Sun, 28 Mar 2010