Bamberg (dpa / lby) – Passau criminal law professor Holm Putzke has accused the law enforcement authorities of being too reluctant to deal with sexual abuse in the church. “It cannot seriously be denied that a different standard was and is obviously applied to the churches and the cases of abuse than in other cases of organized crime, such as the manipulation of large car companies with the exhaust gas values,” he told the “Franconian Day”. (Thursday).
“While searches were carried out on a large scale there without any polite restraint, the public prosecutor’s offices left it to the dioceses with polite requests to hand over relevant files.” That was “all the more remarkable in an institution that has covered up cases of sexual abuse for many decades with almost criminal energy,” the lawyer continued.
In the Archdiocese of Bamberg, allegations of abuse against a long-standing pastor in the Upper Franconian community of Wallenfels were recently made known. The man has since passed away. According to the Archdiocese, allegations of abuse against the Catholic pastor were on record as early as 1963. At the time, however, there were no consequences.
At the same time, Putzke criticized the church’s will to clarify: “If twelve years after the first major abuse study, files are still appearing in which cases of sexual abuse are documented and of which the law enforcement authorities are still unaware, on the one hand that often increases the doubts eloquently invoked will to enlightenment. And on the other hand it reinforces the impression that the Catholic Church is completely overwhelmed with the work-up.”
Putzke is one of a group of criminal lawyers who filed complaints with several public prosecutors in Germany in 2018 in connection with the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.