Munich diocese faces 'tsunami' of abuse claims

[Liberal_in_LA]

I think it's ironic they assign a woman to this task
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Munich diocese faces 'tsunami' of abuse claims

Associated Press Writer

MUNICH — Pope Benedict XVI's former diocese in Munich says it is facing new allegations of physical and sexual abuse on a daily basis.

"It is like a tsunami," Elke Huemmeler, head of the diocese's newly founded sexual abuse prevention task force, told The Associated Press.

Huemmeler estimates there are about 120 cases on the record to date, around 100 of them at the nearby Ettal monastery boarding school, run by Benedictine monks. She stresses, however, her role is not to deal with the old cases, but help set up the prevention program.

On Friday, her new Task Force on Sexual Abuse Prevention, now officially commissioned and backed by Archbishop Reinhard Marx, began its work.

By November, it plans to put forth a comprehensive plan to fight abuse in Roman Catholic church institutions. It is the first of its kind in the German church, which has been shaken to its foundation by new allegations of sexual and physical attacks on minors since the beginning of the year.

When the first abuse cases broke at Ettal about three weeks ago, Huemmeler immediately sat down with four or five colleagues to brainstorm and find a way out of the "disaster", as she calls it.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-03-19-germany-church-abuse_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[hedgehog]

1. Gee, after the clerics screwed things up for years with cover-ups,

now that it's time to clean up the mess, it's ok for a female to step in?

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. yep, no power for women in the church until they need someone to cleanup

[Warpy]

5. The angriest I ever saw my mother

was one Sunday after she'd been subjected to a sermon about how the only place for women in the church was cleaning it.

To this day, I have no idea why she didn't get up and walk out.

I missed it. I ditched as usual.

The priest who delivered that sermon was discovered to be fucking one of the teachers at the school. He defrocked and married her. I've always felt so terribly sorry for that woman.

[MattBaggins]

6. I was kind of suprised to see Germany having such a problem as well

The priest in the area where my wife is from; defrocked and married a woman he got pregnant. I was kind of surprised that no one in the town cared or batted an eye. She and her family laughed at me for being naive. Most of the priests according to them, have girlfriends on the sly. No one cares or really thinks it's a problem.

[Warpy]

7. One of my dad's jobs when he was 16

was driving the parish priest to a whorehouse in the next town once a week.

The priest paid well for the transportation and my dad's silence. My dad said the guy was one of the few normal priests he'd ever met, the rest of them were twisted in one way or another.

So yes, it's always gone on. Celibacy is a cruel joke on everybody.

[GodlessBiker]

2. The Pope should step down.

[Warpy]

4. Physical abuse in the church has been endemic

probably since it began, kids getting smacked around to make them say the right things and behave the right way. We've all got horror stories of Sister Mary Torquemada if we survived Catholic school. If this were limited to that sort of physical abuse, we'd all have to come forward to cash in.

Unfortunately, it's gone far beyond that. I'm glad this is finally coming out. If there is any justice in the world, Rome should be finished by it, especially its sense of entitlement as the First Estate to be exempt from civil law. The silly notion of papal infallibility should also finally be disproven, forever.

The sexual exploitation of children by clergy has got to be the worst offense out there. The systematic enabling of it for centuries by clergy entitled to be above the law and their protection by Rome should be something the princes of the church should lose their thrones over.

The Catholic church will continue and should, Catholics being generally reasonable and liberal folks who are told where to find both conscience and empathy if they'd had trouble looking for them. However, the hierarchy has got to go and these cases prove why.