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  German Bishop Accused of Hitting Children with Carpet Beater

By Allan Hall
Telegraph
March 31, 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7541632/German-bishop-accused-of-hitting-children-with-carpet-beater.html

A close friend and ally of Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of regularly beating children in his care.

Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg is facing claims he flogged and hit former pupils at a Catholic orphanage in Germany 30 years ago.

The Bishop, who was appointed by the Pope in 2005, is a controversial figure who has tried to explain paedophilia in the Church by claiming the sexual liberation movement must share a "significant" part of the blame.

He is accused of using a carpet beater on the bare skin of boys and girls as he screamed: "Satan is in you and I must drive him out."

Five alleged victims from the orphanage, in the village of Schrobenhausen, have claimed he also used a stick, a wooden cookery spoon and, when that broke, his fists.

Nuns of the Mallersdorf order who worked for him at the at the St. Josef children's home in Schrobenhausen also hit the children with "wooden brooms, wooden shoes, and clothing hangers," they said.

Hildegard Sedlmair, now 48, claimed she was beaten by him when she was 15.

"I was really upset when the pope appointed him Bishop because he was much lower in rank then and doesn't deserve to be where he is because of what he put us through," she said.

She said the time spent at the home, for children with family difficulties, "was the worst of my life". She went on: "He grabbed me by my smock, hauled me out of bed and beat me on the upper arms until they were black and blue."

A man who refused to be identified because he works as a teacher himself now told Germany's Sueddeutsche newspaper: "A minimum of 50 times in one year he made me drop my trousers and beat me on my behind with a carpet beater or a stick, really, really hard."

As a young cleric, Bishop Mixa, 68, was friendly with the then Cardinal Ratzinger in Germany and his conservative views made him a favourite when he became pontiff. He is part of a conservative group in Bavaria that has backed the Pope's more controversial decisions.

A spokeswoman for the Bishopric of Augsburg said: "These are absurd and defamatory statements."

The orphanage has been under different management since 1999 and no complaints have been made public since Mr Mixa moved on and started to rise in the church hierarchy.

The claims came as Vatican officials drew up a three-pronged attack on attempts by American lawyers to drag Pope Benedict XVI before a court to answer questions on the priest sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church.

Lawyers in Kentucky want Benedict to go before a judge to reveal what he knows of abuse claims but the Vatican legal team is arguing that the Pope has immunity as a head of state and therefore cannot be summonsed.

They are also insisting that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Kentucky case centres on determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself, for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children.

It was filed in 2004 by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican and their lawyer William McMurry insists there are thousands of victims across the country.

Meanwhile in Switzerland, where 60 allegations of paedophile priests have been reported, bishops admitted they had "underestimated'' the extent of sexual abuse by clergy.

 
 

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