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Abuse victims reject Jesuit payout offer

A body representing former pupils sexually abused by Jesuit priests in Germany rejected on Thursday an offer of 5,000 euros (6,832 dollars) in compensation per victim as woefully inadequate.

"The sum is totally insufficient, either to compensate for the damage caused or to signal a recognition of guilt," Thomas Weiner from the Eckiger Tisch (Square Table) told the Frankfurter Rundschau daily.

Instead, victims should receive on average a payout of 80,000 euros each, he said, 16 times the offer announced by Jesuit orders on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the order in Munich said the Jesuits had sent the offer in letters and emails to the around 200 victims who had come forward, in which it was noted that the sum "could never compensate for the suffering incurred."

Recipients had attended Jesuit schools across Germany, where revelations a year ago of sexual violence against students brought a scandal plaguing the Roman Catholic Church to Pope Benedict XVI's native country.

The spokesman in Munich, Thomas Busch, said the payout would not be made for another two to three months while the Jesuits sought a comprehensive offer with other Roman Catholic institutions.

The German Bishops Conference has not yet taken a decision on the matter.

Germany has faced revelations over the past year that hundreds of children were physically and sexually abused in institutions throughout the country, all but a handful run by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church in Germany has said it failed to investigate properly claims of abuse and that in some cases there was a cover-up, with paedophile priests simply moved elsewhere instead of being disciplined and reported to the police.

It has also faced accusations of foot-dragging on reparations for victims, most of whom suffered their abuse several decades ago, too long ago for criminal charges to be brought.

The 83-year-old pope is due to visit Germany in September in his first state visit since becoming pontiff in 2005. He has made two private trips in 2005 and 2006.




© 2010 AFP

'If you tell, you go to hell'

"As Pope Benedict continues his visit to Britain, Channel 4 News north of England Nick Martin meets three clerical sex abuse victims who tell him their harrowing stories." Read More

**Update** It seems that channel 4 News decided to take down this story. I wonder why.........

Here's another link to the story.

But if you click it you'll see that the story has been removed. The video was very important and damaging to the Vatican. That is why it was removed.

Here's the text of the article at least:

"As Pope Benedict continues his visit to Britain, Channel 4 News north of England Nick Martin meets three clerical sex abuse victims who tell him their harrowing stories. Therese Albrecht looks me straight in the eyes and says: “I planned the whole thing; I was going to buy a gun, go see the priest who abused me, shoot him in the head and then kill myself – that’s how bad it got.”
She did not, because she feared she would go to hell for killing the priest.
Ms Albrecht is a straight talker. A former New York cop, she was abused at the age of eight by her parish priest.



”The priest who abused me controlled me through fear,” she said. ”There was a rhyme: ‘If you tell, you go to hell.’ It worked. I didn’t tell. Not for a long time.” Life’s work to protect children I am spending two days with three women who have made it their life’s work to prod and pester the Vatican. They want the Pope to do more to protect children who come into contact with priests intent on abusing them. 

And they are not satisfied with the Pope’s expressions of regret on the first day of a four-day state visit to the UK. “We have heard the apologies, now we want action,” said Barbara Blaine, the president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). 

”I was abused by my priest from the age of 13. My family looked up to him, the whole community looked up to him. It was horrendous, embarrassing but I was just a child and I didn’t understand what was happening,” she said. The pair have travelled from the US to be in Edinburgh for the papal visit. With them is Barbara Dorris, a retired gym teacher who was raped at the age of six by her parish priest.

“The priest told my mother to put me in my best dress and send me to church to help out,” she said.

”My mother was so proud that I had been chosen. I was a special chosen one. She didn’t know that he was raping me.”

SNAP says the way the Catholic church is dealing with emerging cases of child abuse at the hands of priests is inadequate and it is looking to the Pope for action. 



The Catholic church says there has been radical changes to the way they deal with this issue and that priests found guilty of abusing children should never have access to youngsters again. But SNAP wants to see a register formed so that priests who they say have been “credibly accused” of child abuse could be named and shamed so that parents can protect their children."