At least 20 students were sexually abused by two Jesuit priests who taught them at one of Germany’s most prestigious high schools, its director said on Monday.
That is much higher than the seven sexual abuse cases involving the two priests in the 1970s and 1980s that Berlin’s private Catholic Canisius Kolleg had acknowledged last month.
Father Stefan Dartmann, the head of the Jesuit order of Germany, also said the two priests continued to sexually abuse boys and girls after being transferred from Canisius Kolleg to other Catholic schools and youth institutions in Germany, Mexico, Chile and Spain.
“I am ashamed that nothing was done at the time,” Dartmann said at a news conference at Canisius Kolleg. “I also apologize that those responsible at the order at the time did not ... react the way it would have been necessary.”
Canisius Kolleg is one of Germany’s pre-eminent schools, the alma mater of many politicians, businesspeople and scientists. The scandal also has become big news in Germany because the country has not seen the kind of major sexual abuse scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church that the US and Ireland have.
Father Klaus Mertes, the director of Canisius Kolleg, told Monday’s news conference that after he sent 500 letters to alumni of the school last month, more students reported suffering sexual abuse by Fathers Peter Riedel and Wolfgang Stab, who taught at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. Mertes had reported the first seven abuse cases last week.
Dartmann conceded that the Jesuit order of Germany had evidence of the sexual abuse cases since 1981, but had never informed parents, students or authorities. Such cases can no longer be prosecuted in Germany because of its statute of limitations, he said.
While Riedel forced his students to masturbate, Stab exercised “excessive corporal rituals” in a sexual context, said Dartmann.
Both men later left the order and Stab has admitted the sexual abuse. He now lives in Chile and has sent a letter to some of the victims to apologize.
Riedel was attacked by one of his former victims in 1986, who then subsequently killed himself, the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper said. Riedel has not admitted the sexual abuse.
All the victims at Canisius school in Berlin were male and most were about 13 when the abuse began, Mertes said. They are around 40 now. Some of the later victims also include girls, Dartmann said.
The Jesuit order has assigned an independent counselor for sexual abuse victims to investigate all allegations and present a report on the findings in two weeks.
Canisius Kolleg was founded as an all-boys school and turned coed in the late 1970s.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS