Citation

Briken P. Dtsch. Arztebl. Int. 2019; 116(22): 387-388.

Affiliation

Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Medicine & Forensic Psychiatry, Directorate-Institute of Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag)

DOI

10.3238/arztebl.2019.0387

PMID

31366427

Abstract

Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the renowned journal of the German Medical Association, has published an original article about sexual abuse of minors by clergy of the Catholic Church (1). Would that have been possible 20 years ago or earlier? I don’t think so.

For the last 20 years, the Catholic Church has been with its back against the wall regarding the issue of sexual child abuse by clergy or in Catholic institutions. Investigations and commissions to inquire into child sexual abuse in the USA, Australia and Ireland had addressed the issue—on the initiative of and under pressure from affected persons. In 2012, the forensic psychiatrist Leygraf and coworkers (2) published a study based on psychiatric expert opinions about Catholic clergy in German dioceses. To widen the perspective on the issue, one should, once again, take a look at this study which had a simpler design than the recent MHG study. The proportion of clergy with pedophilic problems was small, while clergy with homosexual orientation were common; there was a large proportion of clergy without partner-directed sexual experiences ...

Language: en