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A demonstrator wears a mask with the inscription "dark number" at a protest in front of the Cologne district court
Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
A Catholic priest has been unexpectedly arrested in the courtroom. The 70-year-old Hans Berhard U. is accused of sexually abusing his three nieces. An arrest warrant was issued against U. on Thursday, and after the meeting on Friday he was immediately taken into custody, a spokesman for the regional court said. The competent chamber called the risk of repetition as a reason for detention.
The priest has been on trial for sexual abuse of children since November and has not yet been in custody.
He is accused of sexually abusing his three nieces, aged between seven and 13 at the time, from 1993 to the end of 1999, some of them severely.
He is also said to have sexually abused another eleven-year-old girl.
The public prosecutor charged him with a total of 31 such acts.
In the course of the trial, other alleged victims came forward, who then testified in camera as witnesses in court.
A witness reported about attacks in 2019.
Because of the large number of other attacks that could have come from the recent past, the Chamber saw a risk of repetition in U.
Most frequently, the children were "touched and manipulated," but in three cases there were also "intercourse or acts similar to intercourse."
U. was a pastor and pastor in Gummersbach at the time.
The case of Pastor U. also weighs on Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg
If the more recent allegations are confirmed, the question arises as to whether these cases could have been prevented if the church had taken more consistent action against U.
Because the accused priest had already been reported in 2010.
But the ad was withdrawn – presumably under pressure from the family and in exchange for hush money.
The investigations were only resumed in 2019 and then led to the indictment.
The diocese's head of human resources at the time, the current Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hess, recently testified in the process.
Hesse had been dealing with the allegations of abuse at the time.
He said he put the pastor on leave in 2010 when he became aware of the allegations.
But a note in the file incriminates him: It said that the accused pastor had "told everything" in a conversation in the General Vicariate.
It also said: "However, no minutes were deliberately to be made of this conversation." Hesse had given his consent to this procedure.
During the trial, he said he could "make no sense" of this memorandum.
has/dpa/AFP