Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · 2017

Germany: Essen diocese's legal review of personnel files names 62 accused priests, deacons and staff

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Catholic priests, one deacon, religious-order priests and lay employees of the Diocese of Essen

Organization

Diocese of Essen, Institut für Praxisforschung und Projektberatung (IPP), Munich

Spiritual nexus

Victims were parishioners and dependents under the pastoral and diaconal authority of clergy the diocese itself supervised and, in a documented instance, reassigned to further ministry despite known risk.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2017-11-01 · official-finding

    Independent legal review commissioned by the Diocese of Essen, Germany. A commissioned legal investigation of all personnel files of the Diocese of Essen, published November 2017, documented 62 accused or convicted diocesan priests, one deacon, six religious-order priests and four lay employees. A follow-on sociological study by the Munich IPP institute, running since March 2020, further examined the diocese's institutional handling. Reporting also documented at least one case where a priest was returned to parish ministry despite a prior conviction and an expert report warning against work with children.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • clerical and diaconal office within diocesan parishes

Primary record

Sources

official inquiry report commissioned review IPP München: Sozialwissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs im Bistum Essen.

The commissioned sociological study of institutional handling of abuse in the Diocese of Essen.

institutional primary review summary Bistum Essen: Sozialwissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs im Bistum Essen.

Diocese's own summary of the 2017 legal review and IPP study.

Related record

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