Child sexual abuse in religiously affiliated and secular institutions: a retrospective descriptive analysis of data provided by victims in a government-sponsored reappraisal program in Germany

Nina Spröber,Jörg M Fegert,Lilith König,Thekla Schneider,Miriam Rassenhofer,Alexander Seitz,Hubert Liebhardt

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-282

Abstract

BackgroundThe disclosure of widespread sexual abuse committed by professional educators and clergymen in institutions in Germany ignited a national political debate, in which special attention was paid to church-run institutions. We wanted to find out whether the nature of the abuse and its effect on victims differed depending on whether the abuse had been experienced in religiously affiliated versus secular institutions.MethodsIn 2010, the German government established a hotline that victims could contact anonymously to describe their experiences of sexual abuse. The information provided by callers was documented and categorized. Our analysis looked at a subset of the data collected, in order to compare the nature of the abuse experienced at three types of institutions: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and non–religiously affiliated. Non-parametric tests were used to compare frequency distributions, and qualitative data were analyzed descriptively.ResultsOf the 1050 victims in our sample, 404 had been in Roman Catholic, 130 in Protestant, and 516 in non-religious institutions. The overall mean age at the time of reporting was 52.2 years. Males (59.8%) outnumbered females. Victims who had been in religiously affiliated institutions were significantly older than those who had been in secular institutions. Almost half the victims had been abused physically as well as sexually, and most victims reported that the abuse had occurred repeatedly and that the assaults had been committed by males. Patterns of abuse (time, type, and extent), and the gender of the offenders did not differ between the three groups. Intercourse was more frequently reported by older victims and by females. Similar percentages of victims in all groups reported current psychiatric diagnoses (depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD). Significantly more victims from Protestant institutions reported having current psychosocial problems.ConclusionThe results suggest that child sexual abuse in institutions is attributable to the nature of institutional structures and to societal assumptions about the rights of children more than to the attitudes towards sexuality of a specific religion. The exploratory data arising from this study may serve as a starting point for building hypotheses, and may point the way toward improvements in prevention and intervention strategies.

Highlights

The disclosure of widespread sexual abuse committed by professional educators and clergymen in institutions in Germany ignited a national political debate, in which special attention was paid to church-run institutions
In 2010, the disclosure of several cases of sexual abuse in institutions in Germany, in schools operated by the Roman Catholic Church, ignited a national political debate and led to public outrage over the extent of abuse committed by professional educators
1050 (25%) individuals indicated that the abuse had taken place within an institutional context. We further categorized this subset according to what type of institution was involved: Roman Catholic (N = 404), Protestant (N = 130), or non-religious (N = 516), with the first two categories comprising both schools and residential care centres and the third comprising places such as state residential child care facilities

Summary

Introduction

The disclosure of widespread sexual abuse committed by professional educators and clergymen in institutions in Germany ignited a national political debate, in which special attention was paid to church-run institutions. The German scandal was only one of a series of similar scandals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, all of which led to public debates and to the establishment of committees for compiling reports of sexual abuse in institutions [7,8,9,10,11,12] Most of these reports addressed problems that had occurred decades earlier (between 1940 and 1980), and revealed that children, boys, who were raised in institutions were at high risk of maltreatment [8,13]. The type of sexual abuse ranged from voyeurism to rape, and was sometimes accompanied by physical or emotional abuse or neglect

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion