(Katholisch).
On Monday, the Franciscan Minorites were the first order in Germany to present an externally supervised, independent investigation into sexual violence . In it, two lawyers document and evaluate 152 pages of allegations against nine known members of the order since the 1960s. One brother describes assaults on 20 different people.
“One special feature was that a number of those affected had joined the order or had already been there, and there are still affected brothers,” say the authors Petra Ladenburger and Martina Lörsch. Many of those affected reported serious consequences, some of which still affect them today. Some of the accused brothers were charismatic personalities and highly respected. One had built up real “power enclaves” where he was “little or not at all controlled.”