Shock in hildesheim

adminonDecember 10, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Following allegations of abuse against former Hildesheim Catholic Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907-1988), acting Bishop Norbert Trelle addressed all parishes in his diocese in a letter on Sunday.

"I am dismayed by the news of this abuse," Trelle stated in the letter. However, the diocese wants to continue its course of clearing up such allegations, he said.

"Five years ago, we decided to proceed with transparency and clarity in dealing with sexual abuse," the bishop writes. He feels obliged to this principle also in this case, in which his predecessor in office is accused.

Victim now 70 years old

"I consider this path the only correct and responsible one."The diocese of Hildesheim, in the eastern half of Lower Saxony, includes about 615.000 Catholic Christians.

The diocese had disclosed the suspicion against Janssen on Friday. The former bishop allegedly molested an altar boy from 1958 to 1963 who was 10 years old when the assaults began. The victim, now around 70 years old, had contacted the diocese in April after decades of silence.

Bishop Trelle's team of advisors on sexual abuse considers the man's accounts credible. "The suffering inflicted on the man, according to his testimony, fills me with deep sadness," Trelle explained. The diocese therefore paid on the recommendation of the Central Coordination Office of the German Bishops' Conference at the end of July 10.000 euros to the victim. According to the diocese, this is twice as much as is usually paid in abuse cases. Further payments, as the man had demanded, the diocese rejected according to its own information.

Disturbance

The popular Bishop Janssen led the diocese from 1957 to 1982. The alleged cases of abuse occurred shortly after the start of his tenure, according to the report. "Many of you will be shocked to hear this news," Trelle wrote to congregations. Above all those, which met the bishop still personally, "will feel disturbance and grief".

How the diocese intends to deal with the accusations against Janssen in the future, the diocese initially left open. The victim demands that Janssen's remains be removed from the bishop's crypt in the cathedral.

According to the diocese, a total of 38 allegations of sexual abuse have been reported against 23 priests since 2011. The cases date back to the 1940s.

The Federal Association of Child Protection Centers has warned against false expectations of the planned Federal Child Protection Act. Child protection centers viewed the proposed law with great skepticism, the working group said Thursday in Cologne. Instead of new regulations, more money, space and time are needed.

"It is not so much the lack of legal provisions or the wrong ones that are responsible for a failure of the help institutions, but the institutional lack of financial, spatial, temporal and human resources."The child protection centers called on the parliamentary groups in the Bundestag not to approve the present government bill.The Federal Association of Child Protection Centers criticizes above all the fact that a youth welfare office has to inspect a child at risk itself. It referred to its December statement on the draft bill of the Federal Child Protection Act. In it, the child protection centers describe, among other things, with the help of case examples, the consequences that can result from "making an immediate impression" in certain situations of danger. Sensitively established relationships of trust with parents and initial offers of help are often broken off by the affected families through hasty interventions such as home visits. Parents, and thus also the children, are then no longer attainable for further assistance, criticized the federal working group.Home visits are in certain situations an appropriate and necessary means to get a picture, it is said in the statement. But in the case of "emotional and cognitive neglect, psychological abuse and sexual abuse, home visits to clarify the danger are often not helpful". Under the prere not to do anything wrong, professionals would, in case of doubt, make a home visit and thus sometimes do something dangerously wrong, fear the child protection centers.The bill presented by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs provides, among other things, that a youth welfare office must itself inspect a child at risk if there are weighty indications of neglect or abuse. The so-called "youth welfare office hopping", in which suspicious families have so far been able to avoid being seized by moving house, is also to be made more difficult.All information about the family necessary for a risk assessment will be transmitted to the new youth welfare office in the future. In addition, it should be made easier for doctors and other "professional secrecy bearers" to weigh their duty of confidentiality and to inform the youth welfare office about a possible endangerment.

First of all, honesty, vigilance and the protection of the people entrusted to our care are the top priorities. In the last thirty years, medical and psychological knowledge about pathologically disturbed sexual inclinations has also improved significantly. Not only in the training of priests, but also in the training and continuing education of our church employees, questions of personality formation and the human integration of sexuality have long been a natural and also regular component. Abolishing celibacy, as some are now calling for, does not solve the problem! According to leading experts, there is no connection between pedophilia and celibacy. And it also completely misses the point of celibacy if you look at it solely from a sexual point of view. We need a responsible approach to the subject. In the seminary, not only a profound training is needed, but also a close examination of the candidates. But education for a strong personality also plays a central role in our schools and kindergartens. Because this is also part of prevention: children who can say no are stronger. We do everything possible to prevent such offenses from occurring.
At the turn of the year, we had already determined with Cardinal Meisner in the Spiritual Council that all priests, deacons, pastoral and parish workers would participate in information events on this topic. At ie here are the questions: what is abuse? How do perpetrators proceed? How do I behave when children tell of abuse? How to act as a pastor in children's and youth ministry? – To name just a few. Speaker is an experienced physician. Unfortunately, events have now caught up with our planning and shown how important they are so that good children's and youth work can continue to be done in our communities in the future and so that natural interaction with children and young people remains possible. In addition, the Bishops' Conference will take a close look at the 2002 guidelines to see what can be improved. Here in Cologne, we will also soon introduce an expert woman as our first point of contact, so that victims of abuse can choose whether they prefer to have their first conversation with a woman or a man.
Interview: Church newspaper for the archdiocese of Cologne

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