Bishop Mixa accused of abusing children
Published: 31 Mar 10 11:17 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100331-26229.html
Five people have accused Germany's controversial Catholic Bishop Walter Mixa of physically abusing them while they were at a children’s home north of Munich in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Their descriptions of the abuse include slaps to the face, punches to their upper arms, and spankings with a carpet beater, the paper said.
But the Augsburg diocese called the accusations “absurd, untrue, and obviously invented to defame the bishop.”
Mixa, who recently made headlines for blaming the German Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal on the sexual revolution, was the Schrobenhausen parish leader between 1975 and 1996. He frequently visited the St. Josef’s children’s home and disciplined the children for their bad behaviour, said the former residents, who are now between the ages of 41 and 47.
Nuns of the Mallersdorf order who worked at the institution also hit the children with “wooden brooms, wooden shoes, and clothing hangers,” the paper reported.
The order said it would undertake an open investigation into the accusations.
Germany’s Catholic Church has been embroiled in a crisis over recent weeks as victims of widespread sexual and physical abuse continue to come forward. Most cases date back by several years, a fact that has politicians debating a possible extension to the statute of limitations on such crimes.
Similar accusations have also surfaced in the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, while Ireland has been rocked by revelations about cover-up efforts by the head of the Church there in the 1970s.
The Vatican has said it received 3,000 reports between 2001 and 2010 of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy committed over the past 50 years.
AFP/DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
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Your comments about this article:
Is everyone subject to Abuse charges retroactive? No matter who it was or how long ago?
If that where true then from my childhood era, 50's. 60's & 70's, I don't know a soul that didn't get knocked around and beat-up by some adult at home, school or church.
Are there no reasonable tolerance for change and evolution in society?
If you don't do these things, it only minimizes the crime and gives permission for it to happen again. Some people think that because it's a religious figure or the Church, that we should still keep it quiet. No way, no how!
The Pope should step down. Every bishop who did not report to legal authorities the perpetrators of this abuse should step down. Anyone who allowed an abuser to simply be relocated needs to be punished and publicly.
I could not care less about the "damage" in public relations terms to the Church, criminal covering up bishops, or the Pope. Open up their banks and auction their precious art to compensate these victims for robbing them of their childhoods and of a normal physical and sexual development.
What they did was evil. Covering it up was evil. Allowing it to stay secret and unpunished is complicity in the evil.
I differentiate physical abuse from the SEX abuse.
My view was on this article in particular which is a different topic.
I absolutely agree with your position on sexual abuse however.
"Bruises fade, father, but the pain remains the same"
Christine Aguilera
Do any German readers of this comment know the history of Moritz Schreber - the guy the rented garden is named after (Schrebergarten)? If no, then read this.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Schreber
Oh, selective history...
One of elements common to all these cases throughout the world is the Church's insistence on secrecy, "adjudicating" the cases they don't outright dismiss through canonical procedure that is closed, secretive and ineffective. What the Church fears most is publicity. It has no interest in preventing abuse -- physical, sexual or psychological -- or in punishing the abusers. In fact, it is and always has been the Church's strategy to blame the victims while shielding its clergy from civil litigation and criminal prosecution. The Church always requires the complaining parties to sign nondisclosure agreements with liquidated damages provisions in case the victim goes public, and always insists on confiidentiality agreements when they settle civil lawsuits. And Ratzinger is in this up to his papal eyeballs.
These abominations must be stopped immediately. The bright light of publicity is the best way to begin.
Have any conspiricy theorists out there, figured out how many allegations have been suppressed against the fella in Rome?
Then there is the case of Cardinal Law in Boston, under whose watch the massive molestation scandals surfaced, resulting in 100s of millions of dollars in settlements to the victims. Ratzinger rewarded Cardinal Law by getting him out of Boston to avoid prosecution, transferring him to Rome where he was made pastor of Santa Maria Maggiore, the third largest basilica in Europe, and is paid $12,000 a month stipend. Law is still there, to my knowledge.
So the beat goes on. Ratzinger was the number 2 man in the Vatican, the pope's pit bull, and he was the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And he was the guy who knew about the abuse going on all over the place and made sure it was covered up.
These stories are just beginning to surface. It will get uglier.
Of course no one has ever made a false allegation against another person in this world-have they?
Also when I was a young child living in the UK,all schools,parents,aunties,uncles and even policeman could hit you and clip you around the ear.Corpural punishment was the norm in those days.Seems that every adult alive should now be put in prison if we are going to follow the laws of today which were not in use then.It was a whole different time.Corpural punishment was rife in all schools.But knife killings amongst children were nil.Now with no corpural punishment in schools,killings among school children in the UK are at record highs.So if the adults are beating the children the children are killing each other.What a crazy world we live in.
I am not making any judgements,just trying to put things into perspective on what life was like then as a child.I had the strap, the ruler,was hit by a policemen for being cheeky as a 7 year old.Even hit around the ears and saw stars when I didn't do anything.I was told to accept it for the many times I did things and didn't get hit.That was many times so I like all children of any religion or none accepted these things as the rules of the day.Why have they waited so long to come forward with these allegations?Every child in my day could do the same,but we don't becasue we know that all children were treated the same in those days.A thing that most people seem to have forgotton.Also all the bring back "Corpural Punishment in schools" brigade are being very quiet at the moment.Wonder why?
http://networkedblogs.com/p30490603
Then-presiding judge for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee gives first-person account of church trial
By Fr. THOMAS BRUNDAGE, JLC
It might open you eyes to the truth.The New York Times never even contacted him,nor have any other media,yet they are using quotes of what he is alledged to have said without checking he did say it.Handwritten notes have been transcribed by the press,but who wrote those notes?The media should have checked before claiming Fr.Brundage had! Also if you read it all you will see that the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial.Now isn't that a turn up for the books.How come the New York Times and the rest of the media didn't know this fact.Because of their sloppy and biased reporting that ment the truth was sacrificed for attacking the Pope and selling more papers.
Your understanding of the Murphy case is incorrect and incomplete. I am not here to shake your faith in your church, but to provide verifiable facts about the Church's complicity in that case. As it is late, I will do so in the morning if this thread is still available. It's an ugly story, and Ratzinger is indeed involved.