Evangelical Church "lost trust" through abuse

When it comes to coming to terms with sexual abuse, the Protestants have so far been in the slipstream of the Catholic Church.

But now the outgoing EKD council chairman Bedford-Strohm speaks clear words.

Berlin - The Bavarian State Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm led the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) for seven years. There are many things that he is proud of - for example the “United4Rescue” alliance initiated by the EKD, with whose support refugee ships have rescued around 2,000 people in the Mediterranean. But there is one point where he is very self-critical: “When it comes to sexual violence, I am not at all satisfied, despite everything we have already initiated and achieved. We have lost the trust of many people here, and so far we have not been able to win it back to a sufficient extent, ”admits Bedford-Strohm in an interview with the German Press Agency.

After seven years in office, the theologian is not running again for the EKD Council Presidency.

A successor will be elected at the EKD Synod in Bremen on November 10th.

When the abuse scandal in the church is mentioned, it usually refers to the Catholics.

But there was also sexual abuse among Protestants, especially in children's homes in the post-war period.

The investigation of causes is still at the beginning with the Protestants.

In the Catholic Church, the main cause of the massive abuse of children is the strictly hierarchical power system in which men alone have the say.

According to experts, other causes are Catholic sexual morality and the prescribed celibacy of the priests.

However, none of this applies to the Protestant Church.

The EKD has initiated a study for around 3.6 million euros to research the causes of abuse. “The results are not yet available, but we already have indications that we have other sources of danger and risk factors,” says Bedford-Strohm. Among other things, it is probably precisely the relaxed, sometimes almost amicable way in which the Protestants interact, which can turn into a lack of distance and then sexual violence.

“We are more democratically organized, perhaps more approachable, and that can lead to people who bear responsibility crossing borders. Our assumption is that these transitions of togetherness represent a possible danger zone. ”The cases known so far show that in communities it was less children than adolescents over the age of 14 who were abused.

The process of coming to terms with it has been slow in the Protestant Church in recent years.

"We did a lot of things that we thought would be the right way to go, but which in retrospect turned out to be not the case in the eyes of those affected," admits Bedford-Strohm.

One example of this is the Advisory Board for Affected Persons, which started its work in September 2020, but was suspended again in May of this year.

Conflicts between the EKD and the Advisory Council for those affected, but also within the Advisory Council, became clear.

"This experience is more than painful for all of us, but it does not prevent the EKD from continuing to pursue the participation of those affected as a central goal." Bedford-Strohm hopes that a new way of involving those affected will be found in the first half of 2022 .

Another building site is the creation of new structures for processing. The EKD has been in talks with the Federal Government's Abuse Commissioner, Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, for a long time. The aim is a “joint declaration”, as Rörig concluded with the German Bishops' Conference last year. The establishment of independent processing commissions is to be laid down in it. But while Rörig still believed in April that the "Joint Declaration" had already been finalized in May, it is still being negotiated six months later. Bedford-Strohm assures: "The EKD is ready to sign this as soon as possible."

For the 61-year-old, it is absolutely clear that the churches are particularly in focus when it comes to the subject of abuse: “After all, the moral height of the fall could not be greater with us.” The result: a loss of meaning.

For example, when does a church representative appear on a talk show?

According to Bedford-Strohm, the following applies to the corona pandemic: “We have not succeeded in appearing in the nation's media campfires - on talk shows or in special programs - with the words of comfort and orientation that we have on our own Channels talked the whole time. "

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And that's just one aspect.

“The topic of sexual violence has - with good reason - become so important in the public representation of the church that all the other things that the church does every day, all the good things, all the committed people who love each other working for others, taking a back seat. ”Consistent processing is the only possible answer.

dpa