GERMANY
Vatican Insider
It was set up in February 2010 and was meant to encourage those who had suffered sex abuse in the Church to come forward. The hotline was apparently shut down due to lack of use
Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City
After the German Catholic Church stopped the KFN’s (Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen) study into the phenomenon of paedophilia in the Church because of a disagreement that arose between the two, on Thursday German bishops announced they were closing down the special hotline created as a first point of call for abuse victims.
Together with the study, the hotline was one of the key elements of the strategy for countering the paedophile priest scandal which exploded in Germany in 2010. The hotline was aimed at “encouraging victims to talk about their experiences of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.”
The hotline was initially meant to stay open until September 2011 but the project was extended several times, until it was finally shut down last December. The line was closed at the end of 2012 due to “a drop in the requests for advice sent” by post, online and via the telephone, a statement issued by the German Episcopate reads. There was no longer any reason to keep the hotline open.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.