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Former priest in the courtroom of the Deggendorf district court in 2017
Photo: Armin Weigel/dpa
How should the state deal with those affected by sexualized violence?
Unlike in Ireland, Australia or Austria, for example, the state in Germany has so far largely stayed out of the processing of cases of abuse.
The result: Nobody really takes responsibility;
those affected do not feel sufficiently heard and compensated.
Even worse.
As a psychotherapist, one gets the impression that dealing with abuse in Germany harms the victims and makes perpetrators more dangerous.
Manfred Luetz
Manfred Lütz, born in 1954, is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy and a qualified theologian.
On behalf of Pope John Paul II, he organized a congress in the Vatican in 2003 on the subject of abuse of children and young people by Catholic priests and religious and later also advised the bishops' conference.
His most famous book is »Irre!
We treat the wrong people.
Our problem is the normal ones« from 2009.
This, of course, contradicts a widespread impression.
Since the abuse of children at the Catholic Canisius College in Berlin by the Jesuit Klaus Mertes was publicized twelve years ago, public awareness of the problem has increased significantly.
The Catholic Church has spent millions on reports and organized countless prevention training courses.
But the problem is that perpetrators are now indiscriminately caricatured as monsters, victims just as caricatured as lifelong wrecks.
When a bishop, with the best of intentions, publicly stated that all victims are marked by abuse for the rest of their lives, he apparently did not realize that he was stigmatizing victims.
In fact, one tries to achieve in therapy that the victim refuses the perpetrator to have power over his or her further life.
This often works, but not always.
However, if the public suggestion of harm keeps the victim in his victimhood, successful therapy is no longer possible.
On the other hand, if perpetrators are seen as monsters, if the basic law's guarantee of human dignity is de facto suspended for them - "Send them to the oil rig," Gerhard Schröder cried at times - then that doesn't motivate the perpetrators to seek therapy.
If no distinction is made between an inappropriate touch 30 years ago and the serial rape of a child, then there is no realistic goal for therapy for a very wide spectrum of perpetrators, because social ostracism is a threat in any case.
However, since most perpetrators are at large in a constitutional state, this increases the risk to society.
Large campaigns that tried to motivate enough really dangerous pedophiles to take preventive therapy have failed again and again in recent times.
Who likes to come out as a monster?
Hardly anyone is aware that most pedophiles lead a brave life because they refuse their fatal instinct.
Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was obviously a pedophile, judging from his posthumously found diaries.
But apparently he never harmed a child.
Finally, there is the second group of victims, the innocent accused.
A Catholic priest, for example, has poor chances in his church if one statement stands against another.
The psychology of statements regularly used by the Federal Court of Justice in such situations is frowned upon in church circles.
There is no one with the relevant expertise on the commission responsible for compensation payments.
If you take a sober look at the results since 2010, they are shockingly poor.
For the Catholic Church, lawyers have taken command.
They ensure that one does not speak of "compensation" so as not to arouse covetousness, that one only mentions "breaches of duty" that can be proven without a doubt, such as the completely pointless failure to report long-barred cases, which does not help anyone affected.
In Munich, the scandalous question of whether or not the future pope was present at a meeting that was completely irrelevant in terms of content was hyped up.
All of this misses the point itself.
The consequences of these legal elaborations are also of stunning simplicity: one pleads for pagination of the personnel files,
for a clarification of the responsibilities and for further training of the church leaders in questions of leadership.
In 12 years of "processing" worth millions in the Catholic Church, not a single person responsible has voluntarily resigned because of their own misconduct.
The failure of this type of legal reappraisal is successfully concealed by grandiosely staged press conferences in which lawyers try their hand at theatrical performances.
In Cologne, the performance ready for the stage – which cost 90,000 euros – was so effective that two auxiliary bishops were temporarily dismissed and one archbishop offered his resignation, although no one could have read a line of the report at that time.
The lawyers even dictated the headlines to the journalists.
In Cologne it was Brothers in the Fog, in Munich Balance of Terror.
This is then regularly followed by what the journalist Christiane Florin called the »shock-shock-shock«.
In a rite that has since been well established, the local bishop in charge declares that he is shaken.
Why actually?
Of course, sexual abuse is harrowing, every single case.
But since 2010 at the latest, the bishops have known.
Even the 2018 MHG study found the same percentage of accused priests as the 2005 American John Jay study.
However, the Catholic Church is obviously no longer able to get out of these senseless rites of reappraisal on its own.
The bishops are now planning another 21 press conferences for the remaining 21 dioceses, in which 21 times 21 bishops will explain their "shakenness".
Ultimately, a society cannot care if an institution commits suicide out of fear of death.
But the problem is that abuse is now viewed as a specifically Catholic phenomenon.
But that's not what he is.
Victims' associations have stated that they assume similar proportions in the evangelical church.
Experts agree that even higher numbers can be expected in the area of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB).
It is also not plausible that pedophiles, who like to choose professions in which they come into contact with children, only seek their victims in the Catholic Church.
But the theatrical overexposure of the subject of abuse in the Catholic Church has led to a dangerous underexposure in other areas.
It is to be welcomed that the new federal government wants to initiate a truly independent state investigation, for which the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference has recently shown himself to be open.
Contrary to bureaucratic proposals that provide for committees, sub-committees and permanent positions, a competence-centred approach would have to be taken.
This would require a high-ranking central group of experts made up of independent personalities without an agenda within the church or within the association, who would organize a scientific study of the Catholic and Protestant churches and the DOSB.
The following should be represented: sexology, forensic psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, testimony psychology, trauma therapy, historical, prosecutorial and judicial competence.
The framework conditions would have to be the same everywhere in order to achieve scientific comparability and to substantiate suspected systemic causes with data.
For this reason, the 27 commissions of the 27 dioceses, which Klaus Mertes also believes were erroneous and which only led to scientifically worthless results because they were not comparable, would have to be dissolved and all data handed over to the central state commission of inquiry.
This group should have the right to view all archives of the churches and in the DOSB area.
In addition, an adequately funded, really independent representative of those affected would have to be set up, which those affected have been demanding for a long time and which actively and critically accompanies the project.
On this basis, responsibilities could be clarified and addressed appropriately, prevention work could be improved, and an overarching, individualized, unbureaucratic compensation solution that those affected felt to be as fair as possible could be found.
One can only hope that the federal government has not jumped into this demanding project with verve and ended up as a bedside rug at the end of the legislative period.