A professor who promoted pedophilia worked repeatedly at the Josefstal Study Center from 1962 to 2001.
This has only clearly distanced itself from him.
Neuhaus
- The statement from the Josefstal Study Center leaves no doubt as to how the institution assesses its relationship with the psychologist Helmut Kentler today.
The center has given "the grown relationship with a well-known scientist more space than the unconditional protection of children and adolescents," writes the board of directors, headed by Roger Schmidt.
“This means that the study center is partly to blame for the suffering Kentler has brought on many young people.” With these lines, the center begins a public reappraisal that the regional church can start at least ten years earlier.
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Roger Schmidt, head of the Josefstal study center
© Thomas Plettenberg
The Kentler case
Kentler has been criticized for promoting pedophilia since the 1990s. By being open about sexuality, he also understood intercourse with children. Parents have to specifically introduce their offspring to sexuality, he said. Minors may also enjoy involuntary sexual contact when adults are affectionate. Kentler placed young people with pederasts he knew and, as a court expert in Berlin, managed to stop dozens of abuse proceedings. He described the latter in a book.
In Josefstal Kentler worked from 1962 to 1965 as a pedagogical consultant on the further development of Protestant youth work and the training of full-time employees.
Until 2001 the study center invited him to symposia and technical discussions;
until 1999 he worked annually as a consultant on camps for families with people with disabilities.
The work-up
Facility manager Roger Schmidt is not aware of any sexual assaults in Josefstal.
According to Schmidt, Kentler's lectures were also limited to emancipatory youth work according to the current status.
"But that doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't also talk about pedophile relationships."
In 2010 the Protestant Church had the chance to publicly work on its connection to Kentler.
At that time, a petition at the regional synod requested an obituary for Kentler, who died in 2008, to be deleted from the website of the study center.
That happened.
Schmidt's predecessor Rainer Brandt also did research in the archive and developed a prevention concept for sexualised violence.
"The position of the center was clear," says Schmidt.
But it stayed internal.
That should change now.
“We want to express our shared responsibility that we gave Helmut Kentler the space to distinguish himself as a scientist,” says Schmidt.
He also wanted to point out the “perfidious connection” of youth work to the emancipation and defense of pedophilia.
The regional church
The Protestant regional church expressly welcomes this position.
In a statement she condemned “deeply her uncritical dealings with Helmut Kentler”.
She was dismayed that she did not have the problem awareness "to decisively contradict his child-despising interest".
She apologizes for the fact that this has not already happened on the occasion of the 2010 regional synod.
Schmidt wants to push ahead with the processing.
If there are victims from Josefstal, they should turn to the contact point for victims of sexual violence at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria (0 89/5 59 53 35).
