Germany’s Justice Minister has a come out in favour of strengthening punishments for child sex abusers, after a number of high-profile cases in the country.
Germany's under-fire Catholic Church admitted Thursday it must urgently confront its child sex abuse scandal, but victims accused it of continued "stonewalling", especially on compensation.
One of the most senior German figures in the Catholic Church has controversially denied that sexual abuse was a problem in the Catholic Church, saying that the problem was caused by gay men rather than catholic priests.
A German former Catholic priest was on Thursday sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for more than 100 cases of child sexual abuse and other offences.
The German Green party leadership has vowed to commission an independent investigation into allegations that it supported a group keen to legalize sex with children decades ago.
Britain's Royal Air Force said on Friday that it has questioned one of its former servicemen over claims that he sexually abused children at a British base in Berlin in the 1980s.
German authorities are trying to figure out whether a teenager who admitted stabbing a 55-year-old convicted sex offender to death may have been one of his victims.
Some sex abusers should continue to work for the Catholic church, a bishop said on Thursday, while a cardinal argued for some homosexual relationships to be treated like heterosexual ones.
Germany will not name and shame sex criminals by putting their details on the internet, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has stated, knocking back a suggestion made by a police union leader.
The number of Catholics quitting the church jumped 40 percent last year to 180,000 in the wake of persistent child sex abuse scandals, a media report said Thursday.
More than 140 Catholic theologians from Germany, Switzerland and Austria called Friday for an end to celibacy as part of sweeping reforms in the wake of a sex scandal that rocked the Church.
Victims of sex abuse at Jesuit schools are finally being offered concrete compensation payouts one year after the abuse scandal was revealed, a Catholic official said Monday.
A pastor in Hamburg has been fired and is being investigated on suspicion of sexual assault for having drunken sex with a parishioner in his church, media reported Friday.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on Tuesday blasted a new TV show in which Stephanie zu Guttenberg, the wife of the Defence Minister, helps expose alleged child abusers via the internet.
The Catholic Church would be ready to compensate victims of abuse on a case-by-case basis rather than with a single lump sum, according to papers prepared ahead of discussions to be held next week.
Robert Zollitsch, Germany's most senior Roman Catholic bishop, said on Monday the Church had "failed" in its response to victims of sexual abuse by its priests.
The world's first female Lutheran bishop resigned Friday after abuse accusations in her diocese of Hamburg, the latest casualty of a scandal to have rocked Christian churches in Germany.
At least 205 children suffered sexual or physical abuse at Jesuit-run German institutions in recent decades, often with those in charge aware, according to a study released Thursday.
German prosecutors said on Friday they were discontinuing an investigation into charges of sexual abuse by former Catholic Bishop Walter Mixa, who resigned last month amid claims he had beaten children and misused Church funds.
Controversial Catholic Bishop Walter Mixa, who resigned last month amid claims he had beaten children and misused Church funds, is being investigated now for sexual abuse, prosecutors announced Friday.
Nearly a quarter of Germany’s 25 million Catholics are considering turning their backs on their Church in the wake of the child abuse scandals, a survey published Friday found.
Controversial Augsburg bishop Walter Mixa has asked for forgiveness as church officials look into accusations that he physically abused children at a church orphanage and spent the institution's money on art, wine and jewellery.
