After the resignation of two members, the Cologne archdiocese’s Independent Commission to investigate Clergy Sexual Abuse (Unabhängige Arbeitskommission or UAK) has shelved all further abuse inquiries.
The commission announced its decision on 9 December.
Four days earlier on 5 December, UAK chairman Stephan Rixen, a well-known constitutional lawyer and member of the German Ethics Council who had been delegated to the commission by the North Rhine-Westphalian state government, resigned.
He was joined shortly afterwards by Marion Gierden-Jülich, another UAK member who had been delegated by the state government.
The UAK is made up of representatives from the Cologne archdiocese, of academic and juridical experts and of victims.
They are put up as candidates in part by the Church and in part by the state government but are appointed by the archbishop – that is by Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, who stands accused of covering up for or failing to investigate abusers.
When in mid-November the Cologne prosecutor’s office launched investigations into whether or not Woelki was guilty of perjury in the case of an abuser priest, the UAK met to discuss the case.
This meeting had left him “deeply disturbed”, Rixen told KNA on 5 December.
“I simply don’t believe that a genuine reappraisal of abuse – including Cardinal Woelki’s involvement – is really desired,” he said.
It seemed to him that “misunderstandings” were deliberately created which always showed that Woelki was the “only person without fault and blame”.
He had the strong impression that the commission did not want to risk a conflict with the archdiocesan leadership.
As long as the UAK commission had no independent access to church files and all inquiries had to be “filtered” through the church administration, independent reappraisal of abuse was not possible.
“We need a nationwide sexual abuse appraisal law,” he underlined.
Asked by domradio.de (the Cologne archdiocese’s website) what he thought of Rixen’s insistence that an independent state clerical sexual abuse investigation was a necessity, the head of the North Rhine-Westphalian Catholic Bureau, Fr Antonius Hamers, replied brusquely:
“We have always made clear that we are naturally open to inquiries and willing for the state to support us.”
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