Ritual sexual violence: The church's fear of victim counselling
The Diocese of Münster has closed a counselling centre for victims of particularly severe sexual exploitation. As a church, it does not want to "take sides". Those affected are appalled.
All her life, Verena has been told by other people that what she says cannot be true. That the violence she reports cannot exist: "We have to justify ourselves as victims. We are fed up to the top."
Verena's name is actually different, but she doesn't want to give her real name in public. Because she is still afraid. From early childhood, she says, she experienced sexual violence and exploitation in a particularly extreme form: by a Satanist group to which her parents also belonged.
There are terrible memories of rape, psychological manipulation and torture. "My body is a wreck," Verena describes the consequences, showing the scars on her arms and upper body. "I hardly have a chance to build relationships. I am afraid of closeness."
Once, she says, she approached the police. But naming specific names and places was something she was too afraid to do: "That would have been my death sentence." Prosecution was not possible in this way. Verena continues to be oppressed and exploited by the group, as she tells it.
Many victims
Verena's statements cannot be verified in detail. However, they correspond to the descriptions of other victims of such ritual and organised sexual violence. These include reports about groups of perpetrators who commit acts against their victims in the context of rituals on satanic "holidays".
"I have heard over a hundred reports from individual people," says Brigitte Hahn, for example, who helped victims for almost 20 years, as head of a counselling centre of the Catholic Church in Münster. "That was unique in the Federal Republic. The Diocese took the lead and said we would help these people. I thought that was brilliant," says Hahn. The office was explicitly aimed at all those affected, regardless of whether they had experienced sexual violence within or outside church structures.
Verena also came for counselling in Münster for years: "We were listened to, there was no judgement. And the counselling centre showed us ways to get out of the clutches of this grouping, to cope in everyday life."
Diocese of Münster closes counselling centre
But that has come to an end. The Diocese of Münster closed the counselling centre two months ago, without notice. The reason given by the Diocese was that the "existence of ritual networks" was disputed. Counselling was "no longer justifiable", it said in a press release.
"There is no question that there is organised sexual violence," says Antonius Hamers, the episcopal commissioner for counselling in the diocese of Münster, in an interview with WDR. However, it is extremely controversial whether there is a combination of ritual and organised sexual violence: "And we don't want to make ourselves a party to that.
Those affected struggle for credibility
In fact, for years there have been voices from criminology and psychological research that declare victims of ritual sexual violence to be untrustworthy. They claim that there is no evidence for satanic or exorcist perpetrator networks, such as a large trial that would have brought such a network to light.
On the other hand, there are a number of therapists whose patients report systematic ritual sexual violence. There are also individual convictions. For example, a man from the district of Lippe was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2011 for raping his daughter in exorcist rituals over a period of years and also making her available to other men.
Kerstin Claus, the Federal Government Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse, does not believe in denying victims their experience of violence just because they report sectarian structures: "Sexual violence always has something to do with power. In some cases, it is reinforced and justified with ideologies in order to reinforce the power of the perpetrators and intimidate the victims.
Obviously, this form of sexualised violence has also existed within the Catholic Church. In the major abuse study presented by the diocese of Münster in 2022, historians documented six cases of ritual abuse.
According to Westpol research, another victim has recently submitted her case to the diocese and the public prosecutor's office. She reports years of severe sexual violence by an exorcist circle within the church and wants her suffering to be recognised.
The Bishop of Münster, Felix Genn, has seemed eager to accommodate such people in the past. In a personal letter obtained by Westpol, he expressed his sympathy to a sufferer in 2018. The woman had also received help at the now-closed counselling centre. Genn promised her then: "Be assured that this work will continue to occupy an important space in our diocese."
Association denies existence of ritualised sexual violence
So why this change of heart now? The bishop's letter was several years ago, says Antonius Hamers, the representative of the Diocese. There are new findings. In addition, there have been complaints about the consultation. The Diocese of Münster does not want to say from whom exactly and how many complaints. However, Westpol has indications that it was mainly about one particular complaint.
Last year, the "False Memory" Association contacted the diocese. According to its own information, the association stands up for people who are allegedly falsely accused of sexual abuse. Moreover, False Memory denies that there is such a thing as sexual violence by ritual abuser organisations at all.
The association forwarded to the Bishop of Münster the complaint of a woman who claims that the sexual violence was only talked into her, as well as that she belonged to a satanic group. This was done by one of the two employees of the counselling centre, a therapist, in her practice.
Der Spiegel" took up the accusations of this patient and made an article out of the one case, which suggests that it has a system that victims are talked into this form of ritual and organised abuse in therapies.
When asked, the therapist denied that she had ever talked a patient into anything. No other patient had ever complained about her before. The counselling centre of the diocese of Münster, however, was closed two days after the publication of "Der Spiegel".
"We are of course very relieved, we have been looking at this work with concern for years," says Heide-Marie Cammans, chairperson of the "False Memory" association. She claims that it is quite easy to "inject content into the brain of sufferers in therapy."
No new offer provision for those affected
Kerstin Claus, the Federal Government Commissioner for Abuse, finds this "absurd": "On the one hand, it is said that therapists have the power to implant memories of massive violent experiences in victims. But groups of perpetrators, critics imply, are not supposed to have the power to condition or manipulate children and adolescents in such a way that they, for example, cover up the abuse, actively maintain it or split off memories of it even over many years and don't consciously remember it until years later." So to manipulate in such a way that they cover up the abuse, for example, or consciously remember it only years later.
"There I see a discrepancy and ask myself, what is this debate about?" says Claus. She fears that a climate is deliberately being created in which those fundamentally affected by sexual violence are less likely to be believed.
Antonius Hamers, the representative of the Diocese of Münster, denies that anyone wants to deny victims their suffering. The church does not want to leave them out in the cold either. But so far there is no alternative to the closed counselling centre. According to Westpol, the association Zartbitter in Münster has refused to take over the counselling. They could not close the gap. The counselling places for such complex cases are limited.
Hamers asks why those who demand such an offer would not take care of it themselves: "Why is it dumped on us? I can't understand that."
Verena, the affected person who was helped for years in counselling, sees at least a moral duty to do so: "A Diocese of the Catholic Church has a moral duty."
Cathcon: Synoding is a displacement activity. Proper response to this is the absolute priority, not attempting to change the constitution of the Church
.jpeg)
Comments