GERMANY
Reuters

Madeline Chambers

BERLIN (Reuters) – Teachers at one of Germany’s most famous Roman Catholic choir schools physically or sexually abused 547 pupils between 1945 and 2015, an independent report found on Tuesday, with some boys likening the institution to a concentration camp.

The 440-page report chronicles teachers doling out physical violence including slapping boys in the face so hard that the marks could be seen the next day, whipping them with wooden sticks and violin bows and subjecting them to severe beatings.

Boys who tried to escape the “Regensburger Domspatzen”, or Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows, were hauled back into the school and beaten and humiliated in front of other boys, it said.

Allegations of abuse at the school, which dates back over a thousand years and now tours the world to perform choral music, surfaced in 2010.

After criticism of that investigation, the diocese, which acknowledged on…