At least 1,259 people working for the Protestant Church of Germany have committed sexual abuse within the last a long time and a minimum of 2,225 victims were affected by the abuse in line with an independent report published Thursday.
The numbers are based on the study of documents and files from the regional churches and the Lutherans’ diaconal relief and social welfare organization, generally known as Diakonie.
However, the authors said they weren’t able to investigate the personnel files of all pastors and deacons inside the church, but primarily disciplinary files. They estimated that the true variety of perpetrators is far higher, with nearly 3,500 individuals who have committed sexual abuse, German news agency dpa reported.
“It’s the tip of the tip of the iceberg,” said Martin Wazlawik from Hannover University, who coordinated the study on sexualized violence within the Protestant Church in Germany.
The church commissioned the study in 2020 and financed it with 3.6 million euros ($3.92 million), with the goal of analyzing structures inside the church that promote violence and abuse of power. As an umbrella organization of 20 regional churches, the EKD represents 19.2 million Protestant Christians in Germany.
At the presentation of the study in Hannover, the pinnacle of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany, also generally known as EKD, apologized to the victims “wholeheartedly.”
“As an establishment, we’ve got also been guilty of countless crimes against countless people,” Hamburg Bishop Kirsten Fehrs said, adding that she was “deeply shocked” by the general picture presented by the study.
“Ever since I actually have been coping with this topic, I actually have been sincerely shaken by the abysmal violence that has been inflicted on so many individuals in our church,” Fehrs said, adding that the church would accept the outcomes of the study “with humility.”
This report comes several years after Germany’s Catholic Church published staggering numbers on sexual abuse by its clergy.
In 2018, a church-commissioned report concluded that a minimum of 3,677 people were abused by Catholic clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. More than half the victims were 13 or younger, and nearly a 3rd served as altar boys.
