Sex Abuse Scandal Hits German Catholic Boy’s Choir

03/06/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
For Pope Benedict, the scandal surrounding the abuse of children is not something that is going away anytime soon. In fact, it appears that it is slowly growing. While cases in the United States and Ireland have gotten the bulk of the attention, the scandal has hit many Catholic nations, including Italy. Some traditionally Catholic nations have been slow to recognize the sex abuse problems within the Catholic Church. Germany becomes one of the latest nations to have a major scandal over sex abuse within the Catholic Church hit it.

A former member of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir has come forward with the claim that he was routinely sexually molested by church employees back in the 1960’s. Clemens Neck, a spokesman for the Regensburg Diocese, did not go into any details, but stated that the abuse happened before Reverend Georg Ratzinger, Pope Benedict’s brother, took over the choir in 1964. The choir made up of some five hundred boys and young men was overseen by Reverend Ratzinger until his retirement in 1994.

The Regensburger Diocese has hired a lawyer to help clarify the nature of the sexual abuse which it states happened between 1958 and 1973. If it did happen in the period of time stated, it does overlap the period of time over which Reverend Ratzinger oversaw the choir.

The diocese is investigating a number of different complaints, including some that may be connected to a priest who was convicted and served time for sexual molestation. These abuses go back as far as 1953, and cover not only the choir, but schools that fed into it.

The Ettal Monastery has confirmed that the Vatican is sending an inspector to look into twenty reports of abuse from alumni.

The majority of molestation cases to come out of the Catholic Church have been of men abusing boys. This has to do with the nature of the Catholic Church up until 1980 or so. Until girls were allowed to serve in choirs and in close proximity to priests, it was often boys who were available for any pedophile who found the Church an appealing place to take up residence. The bulk of non-relation based sexual molestation involving boys occurs because of a belief among pedophiles that boys are less likely to report abuse than girls.

Unfortunately, with the social training that occurs in our culture and many Western cultures, this is often the case. Most pedophiles are uninterested in the sex of a given child until they hit puberty. Those predators who target post-pubescent children do so based upon sexual preference, but those who target pre-pubescent children tend to target based upon the child-like nature of their victims and not the sex.