AP Interview: German abuse victim faults pope Benedict XVI, seeks compensation from church

Abuse victim faults pope, demands compensation

GELSENKIRCHEN, Germany — A German man who says a priest sexually abused him as an altar boy is demanding an apology from Pope Benedict XVI and compensation “even if the church goes bankrupt.”

Wilfried Fesselmann said then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is ultimately to blame for allowing the priest to continue in his pastoral duties.

“It is an insolence that the Catholic Church was only busy with covering-up and moving the priest around for years instead of dismissing him,” Fesselmann said in an interview this week with The Associated Press.

Fesselmann claims a chaplain, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, forced him to sleep with him and practice oral sex when he was an 11-year-old boy in the western city of Essen.

Three decades later, the case is especially explosive for the Roman Catholic Church as they cast doubt on the current pope’s handling of pedophile priests during his tenure as Archbishop of Munich and Freising.

After being abused, Fesselmann was afraid to tell his deeply Catholic parents what had happened. “That was inconceivable; they would have never believed me,” he told the AP on Thursday in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen in the industrial Ruhr River basin.

But he told a friend who alerted his parents, who then contacted local clergy. Fesselmann’s claims and three other sex abuse cases against Hullermann a few months earlier caused the Essen diocese to transfer the priest to Munich in 1980 where he was to undergo therapy — a decision approved by Ratzinger.

Hullermann was given therapy but was allowed to resume pastoral duties almost immediately. He later worked again with children and youth and in 1986 was handed a suspended sentence for molesting a boy. Following the sentence, he was again assigned to another parish.

“Why didn’t Ratzinger remove him? They should have dismissed him. He was dangerous,” the 41-year-old father of three said.

Ratzinger’s then-top aide, Gerhard Gruber, now aged 81, has taken the lone responsibility for the decision to reassign him to a parish shortly after he started his therapy.

Ever since, however, questions persist whether such a decision would be possible without at least informing the archbishop.

“Gruber has jumped in front of the pope to protect him,” Fesselmann said. He insists the archbishop was ultimately responsible.

“When top executives sign a decision, they’re accountable for it. If it goes wrong, they have to quit,” Fesselmann said.

He is now urging Benedict to apologize with a strongly-worded statement for the past mistakes — his own and those of his clergymen.

“Actually, a general apology by the pope is not enough for me,” Fesselmann said. “What about a private audience for all victims abused by Hullermann?”

Hullermann continued to serve as a priest in Bavaria for three decades. He was removed from his duties as pastor in the spa town of Bad Toelz only last month after Fesselmann came forward and disclosed his story, encouraged by other emerging abuse cases in Germany.

The archdiocese of Munich issued a statement on March 12 confirming that Hullerman was allowed to continue working as a priest “despite allegations of sexual abuse and a sentencing. Gruber takes on the full responsibility for this.”

Fesselmann now wants unspecified financial compensation of a scale similar to that in the U.S., where churches paid out an estimated $2 billion to abuse victims.

“There needs to be a compensation so that the victims at least get some money — even if the church goes bankrupt over it,” he said.