“No evidence whatsoever”

The complaint against Zollitsch had filed an alleged abuse victim. The man accuses Zollitsch of having "arranged" the employment of a priest in the monastery and pilgrimage church of Birnau in 1987, although it was known that the priest had already been sexually assaulted. The public prosecutor's office in Freiburg, which had received the complaint, had forwarded it to Constance with the request that it be taken over, because proceedings against the priest were also pending at Lake Constance. This was discontinued a few days ago due to the statute of limitations. As for the stay of the priest in Birnau in the period from 1987 to 1992, according to the Constance prosecutor's office, "no concrete acts of abuse or names of injured parties" have become known. For this reason, it was not appropriate to "carry out further investigations into the question of who was responsible for the personnel of the Father, and whether or not the Father had been killed". when Dr. Zollitsch became aware of a renewed activity of the Father". Should victims of abuse from that time nevertheless come forward, he said, it would be necessary to prove that Zollitsch had acted intentionally. "This would require that he condoned that the priest would commit further acts of abuse and that he wanted to contribute to the abuse by promoting these acts," the prosecutor's office said. There is no evidence for such an amption. However, the investigation had revealed that the priest had been abusive during an earlier stay in Birnau between 1966 and 1968. However, these acts are time-barred under criminal law, which is why it is irrelevant whether Zollitsch held a position at that time "that would have been suitable to establish a criminally relevant co-responsibility.".. Birnau is a priory of the Austrian Cistercian abbey of Wettingen-Mehrerau. Abbot Anselm van der Linde had previously acknowledged "inadequate handling" by his order of perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse.