Cases of abuse in Kremsmünster Abbey
The abuse cases in Kremsmünster Abbey are numerous cases of sexual, physical and psychological violence at the Kremsmünster Abbey High School , which have been investigated since 2010 in a period from 1950 to 2005. In the course of the following criminal and canonical appraisal, three fathers of the Kremsmünster Abbey have been prosecuted for sexual abuse , and a further 21 people (including four secular teachers) were identified according to the results of a scientific study in connection with violent and pedosexual assaults. A large part of the acts were attributed to seven former prefects who systematically practiced educational abuse in the Konvikt and grammar school in the 1970s to 1990s . In the course of the investigation, the number of previously known victims was put at 94 former students, with 24 also involved in the criminal prosecution of Alfons Mandorfer . The number of unreported cases is certainly much higher due to the long period of offenses and the high number of offenders, but has not yet been fully recorded due to the lack of a quantitative analysis.
Forms of violence
As part of the public prosecutor's investigations and the subsequent scientific studies, numerous forms of sexual, physical and psychological violence were documented in everyday school and boarding school life. Specifically, the cases of sexual abuse range from joint showers, manipulation of the sexual organs to anal and oral rape, the cases of physical abuse from sadistically motivated torture, light and serious bodily harm to being punished with an ox whip . Psychological assaults such as public humiliation, dangerous threats or the declaration of being "outlawed" were among the measures of intimidation, as well as ritualized and instrumentalized violence among the students themselves. The last documented case of sexual assault dates back to 2001, the perpetrator at the time was subsequently withdrawn from school service in 2005.
Canon law and state court proceedings
The incidents led to police investigations against some fathers in 2001 and 2008, but did not reach the public until March 2010 through a newspaper report in the Upper Austrian News . This subsequently led to further investigations by the public prosecutor against a total of eleven people who were active as teachers at the grammar school and educators in the boarding school and day care center in the 1970-2000s. Two sexual abuse proceedings and eight further investigations into bodily harm and psychological abuse have been closed due to the statute of limitations or the minor criminal relevance of the offenses. The main perpetrator and former Konviktdirektor P. Alfons ( August Mandorfer ) resigned from the order in March 2012 after a canonical procedure and in April 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI. been laicized. Another canonical proceeding against Fr. Benedikt, who was withdrawn from the boarding school in the 1970s - but still taught at the grammar school until his retirement in the 1990s, led to internal conditions that were not defined in more detail. According to a statement by the monastery, the corresponding proceedings against Fr. Petrus, who had already been removed from school service in 2005, were concluded at the end of 2013 with the condition not to exercise his diaconate for five years. After a three-year investigation period, Mandorfer was sentenced to twelve years in prison on July 3, 2013 by the Steyr Regional Court for the proven abuse of 24 former pupils. On October 28, 2014, the Supreme Court also dismissed Mandorfer's appeal for annulment, thereby confirming the guilty verdict. The Linz Higher Regional Court confirmed the final sentence of 12 years on January 29, 2015, but referred the victims' claims for damages to civil law. In the years 2010 to 2013, the foundation paid a total of € 500,000 in compensation and € 200,000 for therapy costs to around 40 victims of abuse through the Victim Protection Foundation.
Reactions of those affected
On March 10, 2010, a former pupil confronted Kremsmünster Abbey with his experiences of repeatedly being physically and sexually abused in the former Konvikt. When further concrete reports about the abuse and mistreatment of former pupils of the Stiftsgymnasium Kremsmünster came to the public, the former pupils began to organize themselves in a spontaneously founded internet forum and to exchange their experiences. Dozens of victims reported to the responsible police and judicial authorities and the diocesan commission, which ultimately led to investigations by the public prosecutor.
At a meeting organized by the monastery in January 2012, those affected formulated the following measures to deal with cases of abuse: Open admission of confession, establishment of a self-administered victim fund, erection of a memorial on the monastery grounds and the historical-scientific documentation of cases of abuse since 1945. With the exception of the In the opinion of some participants, Abbot Ambros Ebhart had already promised the victim fund at the meeting to work out the concrete implementation of these points by April 15, 2012 in coordination with those affected.
On Good Friday 2012, Abbot Ambros formulated a statement on this in a letter, which, however, was not satisfactory for those affected. In December 2012, two of the participants at the time therefore filed a declaratory action against the pen in order to implement the above-mentioned processing measures in court. Abbot Ambros explained in a "profile" interview: "We are interested in a scientific analysis of the unfortunate incidents, but we do not allow this to be dictated to us". The action was ultimately dismissed because the court was of the opinion that the abbot's promise had only been considered and that the plaintiffs had misinterpreted his words as a promise.
In the meantime, two other abuse victims have also sued the pen for payment of damages. Among other things, these processes involved clarifying the responsibility of the monastery via the so-called "Klasnic Commission" regardless of the limitation periods and the partial payments already made. Any proceeds from one of the two lawsuits will be donated to a non-profit victim protection organization.
On March 21, 2013 former on the initiative of students took Wissensturm in Linz a symposium on Causa Kremsmuenster place where a number of experts as the author Andreas Huckele , the historian Michael John , the lawyer Alois Birklbauer , psychiatrist Heidi Kastner and the psychologist Joseph Christian Aigner discussed the measures for the scientific processing of the abuse cases.
Reactions of the pen
After the occurrence of the cases, the monastery sought to talk to those affected; it worked with external experts and the diocesan commission for these matters. The pen announced updates in the processing process via its homepage and various media. The subject was discussed with the current students, including parents. In May 2011, Felix Mitterer's play Die Beichte was performed in the theater of the Kremsmünster Abbey .
According to press spokesman P. Bernhard Eckerstorfer, the demands of those affected contain some concerns that the monastery either shares or is already implementing. "Significant amounts" have been paid out and they are working unconditionally with the so-called Klasnic Commission. A stone tablet or something similar is conceivable after the processing has been completed. In addition, a "living memorial" in the form of an educational symposium was brought into being. This took place once in November 2012 in the form of a teacher training seminar on the subject of "feedback culture" in the winter hall of the monastery.
In September 2014, in the passage from the outer courtyard to the grammar school, a memorial plaque was placed with the following inscription: "Nobody should be sad in the house of God. (Rule of St. Benedict 31:19) In memory of those students who went to boarding school and school, physical, psychological and have experienced sexual violence. Your suffering is a warning and an incentive for the future. "
After the public prosecutor's investigations had been completed, the Institute for Practical Research and Project Consulting Munich (IPP) was commissioned with the scientific processing of the cases in March 2013. The results of the two-year research project were published on March 27, 2015 in a study on "Sexual abuse, psychological and physical violence in the boarding school and school of the Kremsmünster Abbey".
Reactions from the school community
During the investigation in May 2010, Father Alfons Mandorfer was expelled from the Altkremsmünsterer alumni association due to behavior that was harmful to the association.
On March 22, 2012, the then student council of the Stiftsgymnasium published a statement in which they described their situation after the abuse cases became known. The constant picking up on the topic would damage their reputation, so the school and class representatives in the letter. Because of the undifferentiated reporting, many people would relate the past to the present. Various descriptions are "not in accordance with reality".
Results of the scientific investigation
The authors of the study, led by the social scientist Heiner Keupp , came to the following conclusion after completing a two-year investigation into cases of abuse on the basis of qualitative interviews with former students, parents and educators:
For decades, Kremsmünster negligently did not adequately protect the students entrusted to him from pedosexual offenders and offenders with an affinity for violence. The existing hints and open secrets were not correctly interpreted. Even from the explicit revelations, especially in the case of sexual abuse by fathers, insufficient conclusions were drawn that would have protected the students from pedosexual offenders in the long term. The boarding school also did not form an "embedding culture" in which mindfulness and self-care were encouraged.
The basis for the research was an abundance of different sources of documented cases of sexual violence as well as psychological and physical abuse. The starting point of the analyzes were a total of 302 reports from 94 victims or witnesses, in which 24 people are accused of the monastery, including 20 priests and four secular teachers. The frequency of incidents with up to 350 individual acts is described in the individual reports. Sexual violence was found in a third of the reported acts of violence and these allegations concern eight Fathers. The reports come from all analyzed decades after 1945, with the most recent report included in the study being from 2001.
The former Konviktdirektor August Mandorfer , who has now been legally sentenced to 12 years in prison, is the perpetrator with the most ascribed reports, but 23 other accused persons can hardly be called a sole perpetrator, because two thirds of all reported acts of violence were committed by these persons. Even the repeated use of the label “lone perpetrator” does not apply to the facts either in the case of sexualized or physical acts of violence. Although no documented agreements or references to joint or organized acts of violence by several fathers can be found, there is a group of seven fathers with a long service life that is far above average, all of whom belong to the group of accused perpetrators and who performed their ministry between 1970 and 1990 in parallel . During this period, incidents of violence were frequently reported.
At all times and by almost all interviewees, Kremsmünster was described as a place with a high degree of severity, where there were by no means only the corporal punishments that were customary at the time and owed to the zeitgeist. There was also a large number of massive physical abuse and, again and again, actions motivated by sadism. This applies to the fathers who act as teachers and educators, secular teachers and also to the violence among students. But there were also pupils who were confronted with the violence-loving or cross-border people to a small extent, or who did not fit into their respective victim scheme. There were also class communities that had a “violence preventive” effect due to their strong sense of community. Many of these students have mostly positive memories of their time at the monastery.
The experiences of violence have led to impairments in the further lives of numerous victims. These affect short-term consequences such as massive feelings of fear and guilt, increased vigilance, failure to perform or wetting, as well as long-term consequences such as auto-aggression, self-harming behavior, depression, restrictions in sexuality or alcohol problems. Social problems are reported most frequently, some of which are expressed in pronounced relationship disorders. The existence of persistent psychological impairments in some of those affected was also confirmed by a psychiatric report commissioned by Dr. Heidi Kastner confirmed.
The reappraisal of the monastery after 2010 shows not only clear expressions of will to reappraise, confessions of guilt and apologies, but also numerous vague reactions that are seen as withdrawals or ambivalent statements. These were sometimes experienced by the victims as a renewed humiliation.
literature
- Heiner Keupp, Florian Straus, Peter Mosser, Wolfgang Gmür & Gerhard Hackenschmied: Silence - Exposure - Coming to terms with: Sexualized, psychological and physical violence in the Benedictine Abbey of Kremsmünster. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-14653-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Accusation of abuse against Fathers in Kremsmünster , Oberösterreichische Nachrichten on March 10, 2010
- ^ Enlightenment in Catholic , Der Standard on March 25, 2012
- ^ Kremsmünster-Mönch before indictment , profile on June 2, 2012
- ↑ Abuse: review and outlook ( memento from July 16, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), Kremsmünster Monastery website on March 5, 2013
- ^ Kremsmünsterer Pater is not allowed to exercise diaconate for five years , Der Standard on December 18, 2013
- ↑ His indifference goes beyond anything that has come before , Oberösterreichische Nachrichten on July 3, 2013
- ^ Abbey Kremsmünster: judgment against "Pumpgun-Pater" final , Der Standard on November 6, 2014
- ↑ Kremsmünster Abbey: Twelve years imprisonment for ex-father , Der Standard on January 29, 2015
- ^ Kremsmünster Abbey paid 700,000 euros to victims , Der Standard on February 11, 2013
- ↑ Further, massive allegations against Stifts-Fathers , Oberösterreichische Nachrichten on March 12, 2010
- ^ The victims and their demands , OÖ Nachrichten on March 20, 2012
- ^ Letter to those affected ( memento of October 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Abbot Ambros Ebhart on April 6, 2012
- ↑ Perfidious System of Terror and Fear , Profile on January 5, 2013
- ↑ Ex-pupils sued Kremsmünster Abbey: complaint dismissed , OÖ Nachrichten on May 24, 2013
- ^ Symposium on the Kremsmünster Cause , March 21, 2013
- ^ Abuse processing with Mitterer piece ( Memento from October 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), website of the Diocese of Linz on May 23, 2011
- ^ Abbey Kremsmünster: civil action against abbot unfounded , kath.net on January 8, 2013
- ↑ Abuse: pen attached memorial plaque , ORF.at on September 17, 2014
- ^ Scientific review ( memento from August 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), Kremsmünster Monastery website on March 21, 2013
- ^ The abuse system of Kremsmünster , ORF.at on March 27, 2015
- ^ Upper Austrian News , May 11, 2010
- ↑ Schoolchildren complain about damage to their reputation , ORF.at on March 21, 2012