A series of sex
scandals has hit the church recently, with cases of the sexual abuse of
thousands of minors and clerical cover-up emerging in the US, Australia,
and Chile. The Pontiff himself has been accused of knowing about a
disgraced US cardinal's sexual misconduct and doing nothing with it.
The Catholic Church is now facing a series of sex scandals, this time in Germany. Der Spiegel
magazine said on Wednesday that thousands of children had been sexually
abused by the German Catholic clergy over a 70-year period.The study, conducted by the universities of Giessen, Heidelberg and Mannheim, detailed 3,677 cases of child sexual abuse between 1946 and 2014, perpetrated by 1,670 clerics and priests. The victims were predominantly boys, and more than half of them were aged 13 or younger. In many cases, pieces of records were destroyed or manipulated, the study added.
Der Spiegel quoted the study as saying that the Church had often moved clerics accused of sexual abuse to new communities, without notifying them about the perpetrations. Moreover, the culprits tended to escape punishment: only one third of those accused faced legal proceedings through the church, while 4 percent of identified perpetrators were still working. The study insisted that it is not yet time to say that the sexual abuse of minors is entirely in the past, as it continued until the end of the investigation period.
New Study Reveals 3,677 German Catholic Church Sex Abuse Cases Over Decades - Sputnik International
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