Official finding Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · 2026

Germany: five-year Paderborn archdiocese study finds 210 accused and 489 victims, nearly double prior counts

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Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Catholic clergy of the Archdiocese of Paderborn

Organization

Archdiocese of Paderborn, University of Paderborn

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Victims were parishioners and dependents under the pastoral authority of archdiocesan clergy, in a pattern the study itself documents as including institutional pressure on victims to stay silent and reassignment of known abusers into fresh pastoral authority over new children.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2026-03-12 · official-finding

Independent historical study, University of Paderborn, commissioned by the Archdiocese of Paderborn, Germany. A five-year study by Prof. Nicole Priesching and Dr. Christine Hartig, covering the archbishoprics of Lorenz Jaeger and Johannes Joachim Degenhardt (1941–2002) and published 12 March 2026, found evidence of 210 suspected perpetrators and 489 victims — nearly double figures previously assumed. The study documented a pattern in which accused clergy and diocesan officials, including archbishops, pressured victims and families to refrain from filing charges, and found that at least one priest criminally convicted in 1969 of indecency with minors was returned to pastoral ministry from 1971 to 2008 without receiving parishes being informed of his history.

Documented coercion mechanisms

clerical office within archdiocesan parishes; documented practice of reassigning known abusers to new pastoral posts without informing receiving parishes

Cited record

Sources

academic institutional commissioned review report Universität Paderborn: Studie zum Missbrauch Minderjähriger im Erzbistum Paderborn: Ergebnisse legen Vertuschungsspiralen offen.: University press release on the Priesching/Hartig study's findings on scale and cover-up patterns.
religious press commissioned review report katholisch.de: Paderborn: Missbrauchstäter jahrzehntelang als Seelsorger eingesetzt.: Report on the 1969-convicted priest reinstated to pastoral ministry for decades without disclosure to receiving parishes.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.uni-paderborn.de/nachricht/157038 Corpus classification: academic-institutional; evidentiary role: commissioned-review-report. SHA-256 6a2dc4a098e57aa69fb059bdadac1a7cc599f6e9063787964c8b3e66474e0def
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/53680-paderborn-missbrauchstaeter-jahrzehntelang-als-seelsorger-eingesetzt Corpus classification: religious-press; evidentiary role: commissioned-review-report. SHA-256 cf98077d76de14215d3f714145e17b681f16d69cb235f7a72af203ab09614819
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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