According to EKD boss Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the processing of the abuse in the Protestant church has been too slow. He was “not at all satisfied”.
Berlin – The Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, has expressed himself critically about the state of the process of coming to terms with sexual abuse.
“In spite of everything we have already initiated and achieved, I am not at all satisfied with the subject of sexual violence,” said the 61-year-old theologian of the German Press Agency. “We have lost the trust of many people here, and we have not yet succeeded in regaining it to a sufficient extent.” Bedford-Strohm is not running again for the EKD Council Presidency after seven years in office. A successor will be elected at the EKD Synod in Bremen on November 10th.
The processing of the abuse has been slow in the Protestant Church in recent years. “We did a lot of things that we thought would be the right way to go, but which in retrospect turned out to be not the case in the eyes of those affected,” admitted Bedford-Strohm. One example of this is the Affected Advisory Board, which started its work in September 2020, but was suspended again in May of this year. Conflicts between the EKD and the Advisory Board, but also within the Advisory Board, became clear.
“This experience is more than painful for all of us, but it does not prevent the EKD from continuing to pursue the participation of those affected as a central goal.” Bedford-Strohm hopes that a new way of involving those affected will be found in the first half of 2022 . For this purpose, the EKD has commissioned an expert for participation procedures with an expertise for restarting the participation of those affected. dpa