GERMANY
Political Critique (Poland)
AGATA DIDUSZKO-ZYGLEWSKA
Interview with Matthias Katsch, the founder and spokesperson for the Square Table Foundation and a member of the Council of Survivors, working alongside the German Parliament.
Agata Diduszko-Zyglewska: As a child you were abused by a priest, and so now you work for the sake of other victims.
Matthias Katsch
Founder and spokesperson for the Square Table Foundation, and a member of the Council of Survivors, working alongside the German Parliament.
Matthias Katsch: Yes, I was born and raised in Berlin. I attended Jesuit college there and when I was thirteen years old, I was abused. Like many survivors, I kept it secret, I was ashamed of the situation, I never spoke about it for the following thirty years – until 2010. Then I came out publicly, reached out and connected with other survivors. Within weeks, we had a tsunami – a wave of disclosure all over Germany, hundreds of former students of Church institutes, schools, colleges came out and said ‘me too’. I’m the founder and a spokesperson for the Square Table Foundation. We, the victims, the survivors – wherever: in Poland, Ireland, the US, Germany, France, we have started to speak. But the crucial question is: who is listening?
I suppose by asking this question you’re referring to a lack of reaction on the part of society and local communities. In Poland, this is exactly what gives paedophile priests the opportunity to operate. People keep silent, even defend priests when a case finally becomes public.
The Church works like any other institution: when it feels attacked, it defends itself – that is a natural reaction. The important question is: why is it so difficult for society to accept reality, to deal with it, to recognize survivors and help them? In Germany, this question is posed to institutions, to the Church, to the families…
We are also talking about a cultural problem here – the differences between men and women in society. In our country in 2010, it was actually big news that most of the victims were men, because society knows that victims are always women! The big scandal, the part that made the news, was that it was men coming out as victims. But of course, the situation in every society is different.
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