GERMANY
The Local
Cooperation between the Lower Saxony Institute for Criminology (KFN) and the German Bishops’ Conference ended due to unacceptable interference by the Church, KFN director Christian Pfeiffer told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday.
He said the institute had already been told by the Church that its services would no longer be needed after the KFN refused to comply. This will be confirmed in a letter from the Association of German Dioceses (VDD) to the KFN in the coming days, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Wednesday.
The project had been scuppered by the “censorship and control requests of the Church,” Pfeiffer told the paper.
The cooperation had been contractually agreed in July 2011, and was to be the most thorough investigation of its kind in the world, the KFN said. The complete files of all of Germany’s dioceses – some dating as far back as World War II – were to be scrutinized for evidence of child abuse.
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