Up to 9,355 minors may have been sexually abused since the post-war period within the German Protestant Church, according to the conclusions of researchers investigating these facts.
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After its Catholic counterpart, the German Protestant Church is in turn accused of sexual violence against minors, with the publication, Thursday, January 25, of a report estimating the number of potential victims at more than 9,300. According to the estimate of researchers who produced this study of more than 800 pages on the subject, up to 9,355 minors could have been victims of misdemeanor and criminal acts.
The report coordinated by the University of Hanover and established by seven German institutes counts 2,225 cases of documented sexual violence, committed by 1,259 members of this Church in Germany between 1946 and 2020. With 20 million faithful, the Protestant Church represents the second largest confession in Germany behind that of the Catholics.
The Bishop of Hamburg asks for forgiveness
The authors emphasize that this number is only the “tip of the iceberg” because they were not able to study all the files for this study commissioned and financed to the tune of 3.6 million euros by the German Protestant Church. According to an estimate by Harald Dressing, a researcher at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, the number of potential perpetrators could be as high as 3,500.
After the report was published, Hamburg Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, who currently chairs the Protestant council in Germany, asked “with all my heart I apologize (…) to the countless victims before whom the institution has been guilty”. Grateful to be “upset by the terrible violence suffered by so many people within the Church”, she promised to act and draw the consequences of this study. In November 2024 a plan of concrete measures should be presented, after discussions between the Church and representatives of victims.
