German Catholic Church says most sex abuser priests psychologically normal
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(Munich’s Catholic cathedral Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), 30 September 2012/Dguendel)
A German Catholic Church study showed most priests found guilty of sexually abusing minors were psychologically normal, according to survey results.
Only 12 percent of those surveyed were diagnosed as paedophiles, said the report released by Trier Bishop Stephan Ackermann, the church’s spokesman on abuse cases.
Psychological tests commissioned by priests’ dioceses around Germany found only five percent could be classified as ephebophiles – attracted to teenagers, it said.
“There are no significant differences to results found in the general population in Germany,” said Dr Norbert Leygraf, one of the experts reviewing reports on predator priests found out in the past decade.
Victims advocate Norbert Denef dismissed the study as biased in favor of the Church that commissioned it, and called for an independent commission to study clerical abuse cases.
“You wouldn’t ask the mafia to investigate its own crimes,” Denef, head of an advocacy group called Netzwerk B, told daily newspaper Die Welt.
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how can the church sponsored report on sex abuse fix accountability rather it will try to exonerate herself with minimum liability. a report by an unbiased n independent authority should b sought.
German experts determine that the behavior of these pedophiles and sexual predators is consistent with that of other Catholic priests around the world: “We see nothing out of the ordinary here in terms of the targets and concealment practices employed. The German pedophile-priests are consistent with other pedophile-priests.”
In the largest study ever done on any institution, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, they also found that the source of the influences that led to the abuse was the same across the western world as we are now seeing in all of our institutions from Boy Scouts to public school systems where the problem has been described as ‘a hundred times worse.” This is accompanied by a very strange lack of interest in the media.