Not only the Catholic Church: the Protestant Church in Germany is undergoing a shake-up after a special report stated - the number of victims of sexual harassment is greater than estimated.
According to a report, commissioned by the church and published today (Thursday), since 1945 at least 1,259 criminals from among the members of the church have attacked at least 2,174 victims.
However, the authors of the report believe that the real numbers are much higher, and it is about 9,355 victims who suffered at the hands of about 3,500 criminals.
A third of the attackers were clergy.
Three quarters of them were married at the time of their first attack.
The researchers, led by Prof. Martin Wetzlevik from the University of Hanover, scanned 4,300 disciplinary files, 780 personal files and more than 1,300 other documents.
For comparison, a report on sex crimes within the Catholic Church from 2018 was based on 38 thousand cases.
Bishop Kirsten Fehrs at the Lübeck Cathedral, last December, photo: AFP
"As an institution, we hurt a lot of people," said Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, chairman of the Protestant Church Council. "I ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart." She admitted that the church "has mechanisms that kept the attackers at bay."
Former Pope Benedict meets with Germany's top Catholic clergy, 2011, Photo: GettyImages
The Catholic Church report found that 3,677 cases of sexual harassment in the years 1946-2014.
1,670 clerics were suspected of crimes.
The Protestant report differed from its Catholic counterpart in that it focused more on victims than attackers and counted injuries committed by church volunteers rather than just clergy.
As of 2020, the Protestant Church in Germany had 20.2 million members.
In the Catholic Church - 23.9 million (as of 2022).
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