Sorensen: "It's important to talk about it." © Taigi (shutterstock)
A pastor abuses a former confirmation student – over many years. She has been fighting for a long time to come to terms with the past. Now, together with church representatives, she is publicizing the case in the former congregation of the now deceased.
Katarina Sorensen tells how she was abused in the 80s and 90s: by the Protestant pastor Jorg D. – a man whose youth work not only fascinated them at the time.
"In the context of this youth work, Jorg D. I am one of those people," reports Sorensen. D. was at that time pastor in Nenndorf near Hamburg in Lower Saxony. At a press conference in neighboring Hittfeld, church representatives made the case public for the first time on Monday, giving the location and the name of the perpetrator.
Sorensen is not personally present in the process. Her report is played in a video in which she is unrecognizable. The name is a pseudonym. For years, the woman in her mid-forties has been working on what happened – for herself personally, but also with a view to the institution of the church.
"At that time I was not allowed to talk about it, I knew that"
Five years ago, she reported the case to the Hanover state church, by which time the pastor had already died. Breaking the silence now also with regard to the community of that time is important to her, as she told the Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd) beforehand at her current place of residence. "At that time I was not allowed to talk about it, I knew that."
In a press conference, Katharina Behnke, the current pastor of the congregation, put it this way: "The fact that this ban on silence is now being broken takes some of the power away from the perpetrator."Now it is possible that other victims will come forward. The pastor's image needs to be publicly corrected, as it was after a confidential meeting with Sorensen in an obituary in the archived parish newsletter, Behnke says.
There it now says: "As it turned out through credible descriptions of a victim in 2017, Mr. D has. in his tenure in Nenndorf continued to violate girls from 14 years in their boundaries and traumatized for life by sexual violence."
"Patterns of planned perpetrator behavior"
Sorensen learns D. know as a confirmand. She describes him as a man who inspired young people. "He brought the peace movement or the Third World problem to the village. We thought that was really great." The pastor organized confirmation trips. Selected young people like herself later went along as teammates, Sorensen reports. "This is how he approached us."
Today, she said, she recognizes patterns of planned perpetrator behavior. With plays with touching he had been in the middle of it. "It became normal to hug the pastor."
"Exploited the power imbalance "
Her family situation was difficult at the time, with the pastor she felt noticed and seen, she says. "I thought, the pastor kisses me, then I can't be that bad." Before she was of age, there had been serious sexual abuse. Continually, the man, who was significantly older, married and already had children, had exploited the power imbalance and manipulated her, he said. To break away, she said, it took her years.
Later, when she has long been in working life, she is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. For many years, she didn't even realize it was abuse, which she thought was a love affair, she says. "It is often said that we don't have such things, not in the Protestant church, not in the village. It's important to talk about it."With a different awareness of sexualized violence, it would be possible to intervene much earlier.
Massive need to catch up in coming to terms with the past
When Sorensen looks for contacts at the Protestant church, she initially finds only the same articles about abuse cases in Ahrensburg near Hamburg. It was not until 2015 that she came across the address of the abuse commissioner of the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover and contacted her. At 35.000 euros she later receives, according to church sources, the highest sum the regional church has ever paid in recognition of sexual abuse.
In her experience, the Protestant church still has a lot of catching up to do in coming to terms with the situation. Thus, he said, further training in communication with those affected is necessary. Sorensen himself often brought in an independent therapist from a specialized counseling center during conversations. "I definitely advise that."
In fall 2018, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) adopted an eleven-point plan to come to terms with sexualized violence. He also provides for the involvement of victims. Katarina Sorensen has advised the EKD in the process of setting up an advisory board for those affected and is also prepared to participate in it.