Church sued abuse victims for extortion

Created: 2022-01-28Updated: 2022-01-28 8:34 PM

By: Johannes Welte

Abuse victim Wilfried Fesselmann © private

Wilfried Fesselmann was around eleven years old when he was massively sexually abused by priest Peter H.

But he continued to make a career, also with the participation of ex-Pope Benedict VXI.

Fesselmann turned to the Archdiocese of Munich, which responded with a criminal complaint against him.

Wilfried Fesselmann is the victim of the abuse scandal surrounding today's ex-Pope Benedict XVI.

got rolling.

As can now be read in the abuse report of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising: When the 53-year-old contacted the archdiocese in 2008 as a victim, his church judge Lorenz Wolf reported him for extortion!

Fesselmann was eleven when Pastor Peter H. (74), then a chaplain, invited him to his apartment in Essen after a youth camp, gave him alcohol to drink and forced the acolyte at the time to satisfy him orally.

At least two other boys were victims in Essen before the parents turned to the diocese there.

What the family didn't know: Peter H. had previously abused young people in Bottrop and was then transferred to Essen.

In 1980 he was sent to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising for therapy, where he was reinstated as a priest and there were further cases of abuse in Grafing and Garching/Alz - there were at least 30 victims in total.

Josef Ratzinger was present at the meeting, where the takeover of the priest and his problems were discussed - which he initially denied and then admitted.

Church sued abuse victims for extortion

The whole scandal came to light starting in 2006 after Fesselmann entered psychotherapy.

"I had panic attacks and problems continuing to do my job, I became unemployed." He suppressed what he had experienced for years, "until it suddenly broke out".

Fesselmann found pictures on the Internet where he saw that the priest was still in contact with children.

Anonymously wrote Peter H. an e-mail asking him if he had a guilty conscience.

"There was no answer."

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Two years later he was again writing anonymously. "I wanted compensation because I had become unemployed and was suffering massively from the long-term effects." Why anonymous? "Because the church knew my case." Shortly thereafter, the police were at the door of the abuse victim: "I was being investigated for extortion!"

The chief ecclesiastical judge of the archdiocese, Prelate Lorenz Wolf, had filed the complaint.

He is accused of errors in twelve allegations of abuse against clerics.

Wolf is also head of the Catholic office, cathedral dean and chairman of the broadcasting council at Bayerischer Rundfunk.

For Fesselmann, the matter was quickly settled at the time.

Fesselmann: "The investigations against me were stopped after the police identified me as the victim." The police then investigated the priest until the full extent finally became known - it took twelve years for the Peter H. case to go through the new abuse reports in January shook the church.