EUROPEAN STORIES – Hear from Survivors

In Italy, there are no official statistics on abuse committed in the past, not even nowadays. However, a report by Telefono Azzurro, published in 2021, shows that in 7 out of 10 cases, the victim knew his or her aggressor: behind domestic walls is where violence against minors is committed most often (55%), followed by the homes of relatives (14%), schools (5%), open spaces (3%), and sports facilities (4%).

One of the most chilling phenomena is pedophilia among the clergy, given that Italy has the largest ecclesiastical population in the world, over 50,000 people. Despite this, there has never been a nationwide government inquiry into this particular criminal phenomenon. To put the situation in perspective, one need only think of the statement by the German Jesuit Hans Zollner, in an interview with the Italian bishops’ agency AgenSir: “Too many priests in the US state of Pennsylvania, between 4% and 6% over 50 years, have acted against the Gospel and against the law. It would be foolish to think that in other countries like Italy the same thing has not happened.” The percentage of 4%-6% indicated by Zollner is hundreds of times higher than that of any other profession “chosen” by pedophiles to be in easy contact with minors (sports coaches, teachers, educators, etc.): according to estimates, there have been 2-3 thousand pedophiles within the Italian Church since the 1970s.

But the absence of a government investigation into pedophilia and abuse is not Italy’s only delay.

In violation of the Lanzarote Convention for protecting minors, the obligation to produce the so-called anti-pedophilia certificate has not yet been introduced for the most dangerous professional group, namely “juvenile” volunteers: sports coaches, instructors, educators, and so on. They do not have to present the document attesting to the cleanliness of their criminal record regarding “sexual” offenses, which is required of others in the recruitment process.

Pedophilia often intersects with another criminal phenomenon that unfortunately also concerns Italy: the trafficking and exploitation of minors for crimes of a “sexual” nature, or rather, violent crimes in the guise of sex. According to data from the Italian Department for Equal Opportunities, in 2020, the Italian anti-trafficking system took care of 2,040 victims. Of these, 81.8% are women and girls, while 1 in 20 is a minor (105). There are also minor victims of labor exploitation (127), with a prevalence of women (57.7%).

A further cause for alarm concerns women who end up in the hands of traffickers with their minor children: these cases have doubled in five years and today the anti-trafficking system assists 190 vulnerable groups that include 226 children. It is no coincidence that, according to Save the Children, “Italy is the country with the highest number of people suspected of trafficking in human beings, with 4,104 people involved, but without a similar number of criminal proceedings.”

One last but no less worrying phenomenon remains: the disappearance of minors. From the report of Telefono Azzurro, we know that more than half of the missing persons in 2020 in Italy (13,527) are minors (7,672), of which 5,511 are foreigners and 2,161 are Italians. The percentage of tracing is fortunately high (about 75%) but this means that almost 2,000 are still unaccounted for.

Original text by Federico Tulli, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In Switzerland, until the early 1980s, it was normal for the authorities to take children away from single mothers and send them to a home or family for cheap labor; for the unemployed and drug addicts to be looked after in institutions where they were forced to work and suffered abuse. People who the authorities felt should not reproduce were forcibly sterilized. And so on. The law would justify almost anything under the pretense of “compulsory social measures”. The people affected had no legal recourse.

The number of children who were given away or become victims of educational welfare measures by the authorities remains unknown; but estimates speak of 100,000, of whom 20,000 are still alive today.

In 1999, almost 20 years after the repeal of the laws that justified these coercive measures, the first request for re-evaluation entered the parliamentary database. It was exhausted, as were dozens of other motions tabled on the subject in the following years.

From 2010 onwards, political pressure increased, and in 2013, Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga officially apologized to the victims on behalf of the entire Federal Council. This was a milestone. “I apologize to you from the bottom of my heart,” the then justice minister said at a memorial event in Berne. The turning point had been reached.

Following a popular initiative launched by entrepreneur and philanthropist Guido Fluri, a new law came into force in the country in 2017 – proposing the creation of a 300-million-franc fund to be allocated to the tens of thousands of people who were placed or interned before 1981 based on administrative decisions, without the scrutiny of a court. It also provided for an exhaustive scientific analysis of this sad chapter in Swiss history, as well as a debate at the level of society. The step was necessary: many victims were already elderly and in poor health, and with the new law they could be helped quickly.

More than 9,000 people subjected to coercive measures applied for compensation and were able to obtain official recognition for the injustices they had suffered while they were still alive. These people represent the hundreds of thousands of victims of coercive measures who could not witness this historic moment.

In France, there is a very peculiar phenomenon on the abuse front, linked to colonialism. One of the most striking examples is that of the so-called “Réunionnais dits de la Creuse”: from 1962 to 1984, some 2,015 minors from Réunion Island were sent to 83 departments of France, 10% of them to Creuse. “Officially, this was in response to what was perceived at the time as overcrowding on Réunion Island,” the experts explain. But for the children uprooted from their island, it was psychological and physical abuse that scarred them for life. Torn from their families and forcibly transplanted to the Creuse region of France, some worked seven days a week on farms, being exploited by farmers. Others reported sexual abuse.

Of the 2,015 transplants, only 150 know their status. Some have died, others have committed suicide, some are seriously ill, and many are still unaware.

But in France, as elsewhere, it is once again the family that is the place of abuse par excellence. A recently published Ipsos study shows that a total of 130,000 girls and 35,000 boys in France suffer rape or attempted rape every year. The average age of these children is 10 years.

Most assaults occur within the family (parents’ home: 51%). They are often incestuous acts, i.e., assaults committed by a family member (49%). In more than one in five cases (22%) children are victims of violence by their parents. Three out of ten children know their aggressor has already abused their sister, brother, or cousin.

A not insignificant chapter concerns the number of victims of pedophilia in the French Church: it is estimated that there have been 216,000 cases of abuse since 1950, according to the report of the Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, commissioned by the French bishops. The Commission’s scientific work was based on the testimony of victims and statistical calculations. Therefore, the number of pedophile priests over a period of about 70 years is between 2,900 and 3,200. The victims were minors when raped or assaulted by Catholic priests or clerics. And the number of victims would increase to 330,000 if lay assailants, such as sacristans, teachers in Catholic schools, and leaders of youth movements, were also considered. The statistics speak crudely of 80% of victims being male, with a very high concentration between 10 and 13 years old.

Raped, harassed, mistreated, forced to work. Unfortunately, the reality of minors in Spain is not very different from that of other countries. Every three minutes sexual abuse against a minor is reported: more than 20,000 children are victims of abuse and exploitation in Spain, according to a study by the Association for the Healing and Prevention of Sexual Abuse in Childhood (ASPASI).

Abuse occurs in the family, at school, in the Church, in sports clubs, and so on. It appears that no child is safe. Against this feeling of impunity, parliament has just passed the Integral Child Protection Act, which increases the statute of limitations to 30 years (from when the victim reaches legal age) and seeks to combat the invisibility of this problem. Only 15% of cases are known, and more than 40% of adolescents claim to have suffered situations of harassment or abuse, which they only dared to express once the offense had become time-barred by the statute of limitation while the predator remained safe .

We are talking about abuse, but also about beatings, virtual harassment, and mobbing. The study by the ANAR Foundation “Sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence according to those affected and its evolution in Spain (2008-2019)” reveals the reality of sexual abuse of minors: cases have been on the rise for five years, and experts are calling for “limiting access to certain content”.

In little more than a decade, from 2008 to 2020, cases of sexual abuse of minors have soared, according to ANAR’s latest study, which points to an increase of 300.4%: from 273 cases in 2008 to 1,093 in 2020. What is the reason for this surge? Experts blame the widespread us of new technologies that dramatically facilitate abuse.

Unlike child abuse in the Church, the typical profile of a child abuse victim is female. Three out of four abused minors in Spain are girls. The average age of the abused is 11 years old, with an alarming 16% of children under 5 years also suffering beatings or sexual abuse during their first years of life.

In 7 out of 10 cases, the abuse is repeated. While boys may suffer physical or sexual violence for a year, the abuse of girls can last up to three years.

What is the profile of the aggressor? In practically all cases (95.8%) it is a man, and 7 out of 10 aggressors are of legal age. The ANAR Foundation warns of group assaults – the infamous “manadas” – which now account for 10% of cases.

The situation of child abuse in Spain is not new: between 10% and 20% of the Spanish population admits to having suffered sexual abuse as a child in Spain, according to Save The Children.

Another worrying issue concerns baby stealing, which during Franco’s dictatorship became a way of delivering children to wealthy families or those sympathetic to the regime. The mechanism was simple: the parents were informed that the baby was stillborn and buried. There was no room for further questions. They were then handed over to other families, mainly through a network of contacts sponsored by certain congregations and hierarchs of the Catholic Church. For some years now, associations of victims of stolen babies have been active.

Original text by Jesús Bastante Liébana, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In 2019, the Association for Victim Support reported 760 crimes against children younger than 18 in Portugal. The spectrum is very wide, ranging from Roma parents exploiting underage children in labor trafficking and forced street begging to sexual exploitation and early and forced child marriages. It is assumed that the 2019 figures reflect the reality of many years.

The best-known example is the Casa Pia scandal, which broke out at the beginning of the new millennium. In the public institution, which housed children and the destitute, minors were subjected to violence as part of a vast network of child sexual exploitation comprising politicians, lawyers, doctors, and celebrities, which had been in operation for about 20 years. But initially, it was the perpetrators rather than the victims who took center stage. Today, if a new scandal such as the Casa Pia case occurred, with the same political and social implications, the obstacles would probably be the same.

When in November 2002, Carlos Silvino da Silva, a mere employee of the Casa Pia in Lisbon, was arrested following a journalistic investigation into pedophilia at the Casa Pia in Lisbon, Portugal was bewildered. After all, Carlos Silvino was just a poor man entrusted by his mother to Casa Pia when he was four years old. From being raped, he had become a rapist and even a “businessman” organizing children for sexual abuse by others.

Meanwhile, Carlos Cruz, a television presenter who had been the country’s darling for decades, was arrested. Good Lusitanian souls – convinced that such a handsome man who never aged would be incapable of getting involved in such a crime – camped outside the jail and courthouse to support him. A doctor, well known in Lisbon, João Ferreira Dinis, was also arrested.

But the arrest that shocked the country the most was that of the former socialist minister, Paulo Pedroso.

Portugal was not prepared for such great misery, but no one had prevented the disgrace. When a bewildered Portugal discovered that organizations existed for the sexual exploitation of children and that politicians could use them, there was a wave of protest. It was always about the perpetrators, the aggressors, but there was total silence about the victims of this case. It was taboo.

However, much has changed since then. Since 2002, new laws have been implemented to guarantee the rights of children, especially abused children, with a focus on sexual abuse. Many cases, some within the family itself, others involving less prominent people, have been dealt with in an exemplary way in the courts. The wheels of the world have always run between happy and sad stories. History repeats itself. One never knows in which mold the world will be presented.

Text by Felícia Cabrita, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

Tens of thousands of children passed through Ireland’s industrial schools in the 20th century. Many were born, or spent time, in mother and baby homes or similar institutions. These settings were typically run by the Catholic Church, and a smaller number by Protestant groups, but funded and inspected by the government. Several investigations have confirmed that a significant number of children were physically, sexually, and/or emotionally abused in educational and residential settings.

Many illegal adoptions took place in Ireland before and after formal adoption was introduced in 1953. The exact number is unknown, but a recent scoping exercise estimated it could be up to 20,000. In some cases, a child’s adopted parents were listed as their birth parents; and many women say they were coerced into signing documents or their signatures were forged. Illegal adoption – and the collusion between the State and Church, which facilitated it – has been compared to child trafficking.

The children who were not adopted or fostered were generally sent to industrial schools. The role of the State and the Church in facilitating the abuse of children in educational and residential settings was laid bare by the CICA (the Ryan Commission). This report contained shocking details about the level of abuse suffered by children in institutions. More than 1,000 people reported abuse in over 200 settings between 1914 and 2000. The report identified around 800 known abusers.

Since 2015, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (CIMBH) has examined the treatment of women and children in 18 institutions between 1922 and 1998. The final report confirmed that around 9,000 children died in several institutions, including, for example, a former institution in Tuam, County Galway. In the years before 1960, mother and baby homes did not save the lives of “illegitimate” children (the legal term previously given to children born outside marriage); in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival.

Original text by Órla Ryan, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In Norway, in 2017 alone, almost 8,100 children under the age of 15 were registered as victims of violence and sexual abuse. According to police statistics, there were very few cases of child victims of violence in 2005; but in the years since then, the situation has worsened, exceeding the threshold of 8,000 cases per year in 2017. Of these, 54% were victims of abuse in close relationships, while the corresponding percentage of children aged 0-9 years was 66%. Overall, one-third of crime victims under the age of 15 are exposed to abuse in close relationships. Also, according to statistics, 7 out of 10 victims of sexual offenses are under 20 years old.

The challenges and unfairness experienced by Norwegian victims and survivors of childhood abuse have been highlighted recently in proposals submitted to the parliament in Oslo. Children who have been let down by the child protection services subsequently face a range of challenges in seeking redress for the harm they suffered. A key issue concerns the heterogenous redress and compensation scheme in Norway: every region, and even neighboring municipalities, has its proper rules on who is eligible for compensation and how much.

In Norway, the treatment of children born into difficult circumstances has evolved significantly since the 1940s, in which orphanages and institutionalized care were the preferred option to take care of children.

Thankfully, the benefit of sending children to foster care rather than institutions is now widely acknowledged. Unfortunately, the legacy of redress for childhood abuse in institutions belies a chaotic and complex system. Victims within a few municipalities, as in Bergen, received redress along with an apology for the harm they had suffered. Worryingly, many other victims received nothing as their abuse took place in a part of Norway that did not establish a redress scheme.

To add to the complexity, in some municipalities the redress scheme only offered victims small amounts of monetary compensation and no apology – no adequate recognition. It can be more easily understood as a lottery in which only a low percentage of victims have any chance of receiving a form of adequate redress which acknowledges that the harm they have suffered resulted from the failures in the system designed to protect them. Unfortunately, a hierarchy of victimhood arises in which some victims are made to feel less valued or that their traumatic experiences of abuse are either not believed or do not matter. This occurs both within the local community that initially failed them and at a national level.

While the policy of institutionalized care has improved within Norway, failing to protect children from abuse and neglect has continued.

Original Text by Julie Crutchley, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In 2011, a reconciliation ceremony was held in Sweden to recognize officially the widespread maltreatment and abuse of children taking place in state-run foster care and homes between 1920 and 1980. Preceding the ceremony, an extensive investigation into the abuse demonstrated Swedish society’s responsibility and accountability for these dire circumstances.

“The Swedish society apologizes to you women and men who have been victims. This is an apology without reservation or mitigation. The abuse which you have been subjected to is a shame for Sweden,” said Per Westerberg, the (now former) Speaker of the Swedish Parliament during the event.

Following the investigations into the widespread abuse and the official recognition in the reconciliation ceremony, the state committed to compensating the victims. However, in the summer of 2016, when the process for compensation concluded, it was discovered that out of the 5,300 applicants, only 46% had their applications accepted by the authorities and received compensation.

The main criticism concerning the compensation system lies in the fact that only those victims who had been subjected to the “gravest” and most serious forms of abuse were eligible for compensation. This distinction is not only extremely problematic but also especially difficult to qualify. Many survivors had to go through the arduous excruciating process of reliving their past abuse through detailed interviews, only to be refused compensation as their abuse had been assessed as not “serious enough”.

Systematic failures in protecting children from abuse and helping victims continue to take place in Sweden, with new forms of abuse becoming increasingly prevalent. According to a recent study commissioned by Child10, around 22,000 children and adolescents have become victims of trafficking and exploitation in Sweden. Many of the survivors say they were not taken seriously when attempting to speak up about their experiences, for example, with health care or law enforcement professionals. In some cases, survivors say they even were made to feel guilty about the abuse they had been subjected to. Such responses from the Swedish authorities lead to even stronger feelings of shame and reduce the possibility of receiving support, care, or justice.

On World Children’s Day, on November 20, 2016, Mr. Juha Rehula, Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services at the time, offered an apology on behalf of the Finnish state to individuals who had suffered various forms of neglect and abuse in Finnish foster care. He addressed the victims, saying that the Finnish state had failed them. The apology was prompted by a study by the University of Jyväskylä that focused on first-hand experiences of individuals in foster care between 1937 and 1983. Three hundred people volunteered to share their experiences with the researchers. Many of the interviewees said they wanted to participate so that others would not have to go through what they had experienced in Finnish foster care.

The interviewees reported having experienced physical violence, sexual violence, various other forms of humiliation, malnutrition, and lack of proper healthcare. The perpetrators were both adults and other children. According to the study, foster care must do better at hearing the children’s points of view and experiences. As a result, the Finnish government put in place an initiative to improve foster care. It did not and has not initiated plans to pay reparations to the victims.

As one survivor phrased it, “neglect in foster care is not over. It may have metamorphosed into something new. Too often we hear how blatantly the Child Welfare Act, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Finnish Constitution are being violated in foster care.”

This was recently confirmed by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who supervises and promotes the legality and the implementation of fundamental and human rights in the activities and actions of the authorities and private parties performing public tasks. Children can appeal to the Ombudsman concerning their treatment in, for example, foster care. About sixty percent of children’s appeals result in interventions by the Ombudsman, while only about one-fifth of appeals made by adults lead to action. Legal adviser Tapio Räty attributes this to the fact that children’s appeals are on the mark, they are not trivial.

The widespread abuse that took place in Finnish foster care is only one example of the systematic failure to protect children in Finland. In fact, crimes of sexual violence against children brought to the attention of the authorities have clearly increased in recent years. Yet, at the same time, a recent study suggests that only 12% of such crimes are reported, the most common reason for nondisclosure being the child victims’ belief their experience would not be considered serious enough to report. Moreover, distorted feelings of guilt and shame experienced by child victims are further reasons for nondisclosure. There also have been discussions related to Finnish legislation on the statute of limitations of crimes of sexual violence against children as many victims of sexual abuse, especially from religious communities, have come forward as adults and can no longer report the crime to police or receive any form of justice or compensation for their suffering.

While the state has recognized the widespread abuse that took place in foster care, the failure to compensate victims and the increase in crimes of sexual violence against children in recent years demonstrate an urgent need for improving preventive measures to protect children, as well as restorative measures and the lengthening of the statute of limitations to ensure past victims’ rights on a national level.

In 2005, shock waves were felt throughout the nation when it was discovered that a father in the Region of Southern Denmark had not only been abusing his two young daughters but also exploiting them by “renting” them out to local men for small amounts of money, alcohol, and food. “Tøndersagen”, or the “Tønder Case”, was the first of a series of child sexual abuse cases that sparked great public outcry. At the time, it was the most serious case concerning the sexual abuse of minors, and the father was given the highest prison sentence possible, namely 10 years. Many members of the public considered this too lenient, and a petition with 30,000 signatures was sent to the Minister of Justice, calling for harsher measures. As stated by one individual, “When the daughter is to be punished all her life, so should the father.”

The “Tønder Case” is a resounding example of what can happen when a state fails to intervene. For eight years, the local municipality received at least 14 different notices concerning suspected child neglect, and the authorities held up to 30 meetings on the matter, yet no action was taken. The oldest daughter is now an adult and has since come forward to share her trauma. Apart from describing the severe PTSD and psychosis that still plague her today, she has also successfully sued the Tønder municipality for compensation because of their failure to protect her.

While her right to compensation does not set a precedent in the Danish judicial courts, because it never went in front of a judge, it still encourages other victims to claim reparations. Furthermore, the “Tønder Case” played a huge role in swaying public opinion. Suddenly, people realized child abuse could happen in their very own neighborhood, and many have since referred to this particular case when contacting authorities about their misgivings.

Public pressure and general dismay at what had happened to the children helped bring about structural reform in 2007, as well as new legislation. In 2013, the government passed the “Overgrebspakke” which gave every citizen, particularly teachers, the duty to notify authorities about suspected neglect. Within just three years, the number of reports concerning abuse, neglect, and violence quadrupled. This marked a significant shift in the role that both the public and the state play in protecting and maintaining the health and dignity of Denmark’s children.

This Danish case demonstrates how raising public awareness about child sexual abuse and maltreatment can truly create a shift on a legal and societal level. However, there are still significant changes to be made to effectively protect children and offer the necessary support to survivors of the past. We, therefore, need to continue to work to raise public awareness and require change on a legal and political level to ensure the rights of all survivors and protect future children.

By Melina Elverdal

In the Netherlands, in the second half of the last century, many children were taken away from their parents by the state’s child protection services and placed in foster families, often strict Catholics, who took care of many children and, in many cases, abused them. These are vulnerable children who became victims of the government policies, organizations, and institutions that were supposed to protect them but severely damaged them.

In 2010, a Commission was established to investigate the sexual abuse of children who were placed in (state) institutions and homes under government responsibility between 1945 and 2010. The committee found that before 1975 the perpetrators were mainly group leaders and foster fathers; after that, they were mainly peers. It turned out that children placed in youth care institutions had been victims of sexual abuse 2.5 times as often as children living at home.

It was not the only major study in the Netherlands. In 2010, the Roman Catholic Church also appointed a commission led by former minister Wim Deetman to investigate the sexual abuse of minors entrusted to church institutions and parishes since 1945. The investigation yielded 800 names of priests, clergy, and religious who were identified as perpetrators. The total number of victims of sexual abuse by clergy in that period is estimated at 10,000 to 20,000.

From 2014 to 2019, a commission led by Micha de Winter, professor of pedagogy, investigated violence in youth care from 1945 onwards. The title of the final report “Insufficiently protected” reflects the critical verdict. The commission concluded that “physical, psychological, and sexual violence” occurred throughout the investigated period in youth care. Ten percent of the interviewed pupils said to have experienced violence “frequently to very frequently”. Until 1970, it mainly concerned physical violence by group leaders and foster parents; after that time, mutual violence by pupils became more visible. A shift to psychological violence was also observed.

In 2019, research was conducted into the Catholic convent order De Goede Herder, to which the government and Catholic Child Protection sent some 15,000 girls who were not safe at home between 1860 and 1978. Instead of a loving and warm home, they were subjected to a very harsh regime. The girls had to do heavy work in laundries and sewing shops, were given onerous household tasks, and made to work long days. The living conditions were merciless. The committee of inquiry concluded that the girls were subjected to forced labor and that the government had failed to supervise the institution, prolonging the appalling situation.

Original text by Tjitske Lingsma, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

The Belgian colonization era was also marked by violence against children, especially of mixed-race heritage, called “mestizos”. Hundreds, if not thousands of Congolese children presented as orphans were taken from their families and sent to Belgium. This distressing affair stems from the widespread belief that living in Europe represents the ultimate in progress and goodness.

Born of relationships between African women and Belgian citizens living in the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, they were, in most cases, abandoned by their biological fathers. Some were taken by force to the metropolis after having spent time in orphanages run by clerics.

In these institutions designed for them, the “mixed-bloods” were kept apart from children of unambiguous European and African descent: for decades, mixed-race children were considered more intelligent than Blacks, even if they did not have the same level of intelligence as Whites. For mixed-race children, lower grade positions in the civil service and army were reserved, and their access to secondary education was restricted.

Towards the end of the 1950s, the “Belgian” Congo and the territories of Rwanda-Burundi counted about 15,000 “mestizos”. About a thousand of them, brought back by their Belgian relatives, lived in metropolitan France, where they suffered painful discrimination.

The colonial authorities of the time considered their very existence a problem, if not a threat, for the European power, as the latter feared the “drop of white blood” flowing in their veins would generate revolts.

Under official directives, Belgian officials throughout the Congo sought to identify mixed-race children, remove them from their mothers, and place them in orphanages and boarding schools throughout the country. Ties to their families of origin were severed. In the orphanages run by religious orders, the living conditions, which were supposed to be better than in the village, were difficult because the state provided only meager subsidies.

At the time of independence of these three countries, the Belgian state repatriated these children en masse on special planes. The biological parents were kept in ignorance of these abductions, and the children were convinced to have been abandoned for good. On arrival in Belgium, about 1,000 of them were placed in foster homes and sometimes adopted by Belgian families. Separated from their siblings and their mother, they rarely had contact with their Belgian father, who was married in Belgium and did not care to reveal the existence of an African offspring to his wife and legitimate children.

original text by COLETTE BRAECKMAN, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In Germany, around 14,500 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in 2020. However, the number of unreported cases is many times higher. The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes that up to one million children and young people in Germany have already experienced or are experiencing sexual violence by adults. That is about one or two children in every school class. Many of these cases are not included in the crime statistics because they are never reported to the police.

The scandal that has caused the greatest stir in recent decades is undoubtedly that of sexual abuse within the country’s Catholic colleges.

According to church personnel records, 1,670 clerics were accused of sexual abuse of minors between 1946 and 2014; no one knows how many accusations were never recorded, or how many files with accusations disappeared. The so-called MHG study identified 3,677 alleged victims – again with a high number of unreported cases.

It was already known before 2010 that priests in the Catholic Church were committing sexualized violence against minors. Again and again, stories were made public, and anyone saying today that nothing could have been suspected at the time is suppressing something or lying. But it is only in 2010, thanks to the courage of former pupils of the Canisius College in Berlin, that the snowball became an avalanche in Germany, shaking the Catholic Church to this day. In 2010, the victims went public. Many had kept silent for decades. Now, for the first time, they heard the sentence: We believe you. Yet, the victims and the media reporting their stories were facing insults and suspicions.

Suspects were not reported, church criminal proceedings were not made public. The structures of the Catholic Church contributed to this: its sanctification of the institution, whose purity had to be preserved; the celibate lifestyle of the clergy; its clericalism, which protected the covenant brothers.

However, a lot has changed and improved since the abuse became a public scandal. First, the affected men and women have regained self-confidence: they have networked, united, and joined forces to act against the church leadership and the state.

Second, there now is the awareness that sexualized violence is not only an issue of the Catholic Church. It exists in the Protestant church and in reform-oriented educational institutions, where the total tabooing of sexuality often leads to violence and cover-ups. Sexualized violence exists in sports, where coaches abuse their absolute power, and on campsites like in North Rhine-Westphalia, where alleged child lovers could do their mischief and shoot child porn for years. In families anyway, sometimes under the eyes of helpless or incompetent youth-welfare offices. And, finally, there now is also the awareness that abuse is not restricted to physical and sexual violence but that it extends to powerful people who use their mental and spiritual prowess to make people dependent on them.

Original text by Matthias Drobinski, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

Every year, 1,200 cases of violence against children are reported to the courts in Austria; the number of unreported cases is much higher. Every day, hundreds of children are exposed to various forms of violence in their homes, including not only physical and sexual violence but also psychological violence, neglect, and mixed forms.

Regarding allegations of violence and abuse in children’s homes run by the Catholic Church, 2,118 cases have been recorded since the end of the 1940s: psychological violence, physical assault, and sexual abuse. 635 church institutions have been or are affected.

In spring 2010, an independent Commission and Victim Protection Ombudsman was appointed to investigate the violence and abuse within the Catholic Church in Austria. This started a process with more and more victims turning to the authorities and the media to make their painful experiences in their childhood and youth public. The violence these people suffered during their stay in these homes is beyond imagination.

In view of this, not only the Catholic Church but also the federal states and municipalities, the federal government, the Protestant churches, and the Diakonia as a former provider of children’s homes were called into action. They faced the accusation of having acted contrary to their legal mandate “to protect the child’s best interest”. It quickly became clear that the published allegations were just the tip of the iceberg.

Scientific commissions were commissioned to investigate the experiences of abuse and to give a voice to those affected. Former children in institutions demanded psychotherapeutic treatment and financial compensation. These are people who were most exposed to multiple forms of violence in their childhood and youth and still suffer from it today. For decades, they struggled with negative and often traumatizing experiences and psychological stress.

Psychological wounds, psychosocial and socio-economic consequences, and physical scars are the lifelong consequences triggered by the psychological, physical, social, material, and sexual experiences of violence, which manifest themselves at various levels in the lives of affected persons.

For many, confronting the violence they experienced represents a new psychological burden. However, it can also be seen as an attempt to break the silence and to take a courageous step towards overcoming the past.

Original text by Gudrun Wolfgruber-Thanel, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

According to the Slovenian police, one in five children is a victim of child abuse: we are talking about 70,000 children. Only one-tenth of these cases are reported to the police, showing that the public is poorly informed and not enough active on this issue. One in four girls and one in four boys are among the victims. According to non-governmental organizations, most cases of sexual abuse occur in the family or are conducted by a person the child knows well or is attached to. Childcare and educational establishments with their immediate surroundings are the second most common location of sexual assault. There is still much work to be done before effectively helping the victims because Slovenia lacks suitable experts. Sexual assault of a child can be punished with imprisonment of up to 8 years; most offenders are male and sometimes female.

A recent survey on the sexual abuse of children conducted by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia showed that almost one in five Slovenes had experienced at least one form of sexual abuse by the age of 18. More than two-thirds of the respondents believe that sexual abuse of children is a severe issue in their country, while almost half of the respondents do not recognize the signs of abuse. In Slovenia, the victims of sexual assault are most often girls; the perpetrators are mostly men from various age groups, aged 18 to 64, and men over the age of 64. Among the perpetrators are primarily fathers, stepfathers, uncles, and grandfathers.

It should be noted that the official and available data go back only as far as 1990. There is no information on sexual violence against children before that time. Although legislation on sexual assault victims’ protection in Slovenia is relatively adequate and appears in seven legal regulations, few victims decide to report such assaults. The Slovenian Police annually deal with a few more than 200 criminal offenses against sexual integrity.

According to non-governmental organizations, this is only an insignificant share of reported crimes, which, according to their estimates, does not exceed 10% of all crimes of sexual violence against children. Moreover, penalties for perpetrators are mild: sexual assault of a child can be punished with one to eight years in prison; however, and this is even more worrying, to a large extent, the punishment is not enforced at all. From 2015 to 2018, for example, out of 424 criminal charges, the court ruled that only 6 cases involved actual child sexual abuse. In four of these cases, the perpetrators received a suspended sentence. The data show that in Slovenia, there is still a lot to be done in this area.

Original Text by Tita Mayer, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

Statistics on violence against women in Serbia are devastating, with more than 300 women killed in the last 20 years. In 2020 alone, 11,000 cases of domestic violence were reported, and 15 women were killed. Black statistics say that every third woman in Serbia is exposed to some kind of violence, mental and physical.

Due to its favorable geographical position, the territory of Serbia is suitable for the transit of victims from Bulgaria, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine to Bosnia. From Bosnia, they would go to Italy, Spain, France, Kosovo, and Macedonia, where they would be transferred to Greece and further to the Middle East countries.

In 2017, the NGO Atina published its research report “Violence against women and girls from the refugee and migrant population in Serbia”. An entire section is dedicated to forced child marriages. The survey, which involved 162 refugee women and migrants, found that 52.5% of them could not choose their partners, while on average they got married at 17.5 years old. The survey also found that out of 162 respondents, 64.8% were exposed to some form of physical violence, while 24% survived sexual violence.

Poor economic situations, expressed through rising unemployment and poverty, are becoming significant causes of migration, especially among women. In search of a job abroad, women accept business offers from their own people or respond to advertisements that offer jobs as waitresses, enterainers, nurses, and babysitters. Instead of the expected job, many of them end up in forced prostitution, often without even leaving the region. In recent years, the recruitment of victims is often done with the help of modern technologies, for example, social networking platforms.

Research showed that about half of the women know that there are institutions they can turn to for help, but only 23% of women do that. Victims do not report violence because of shame and fear of escalation of violence, or because they believe that the experienced violence is not “serious” enough to require police intervention. Many also distrust police work. However, it was also found that only 10% of women really know what positive legislation measures mean, which indicates the need for more intensive information for women about domestic violence in general, as well as about legislation and protection options.

On May 21, 2020, the Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Strategy for Prevention and Protection of Children from Violence for the period 2020-2023, with the accompanying Action Plan for 2020 and 2021. The strategy defines different forms of violence and, unlike the previous one, recognizes a larger number of environments in which violence occurs. The strategy also points out that corporal punishment of a child to correct or control his behavior is a form of child abuse and that society must therefore have zero tolerance. The importance of special protection for children of vulnerable groups, who are often exposed to multiple forms of violence, is also emphasized; recognized as particularly vulnerable groups of children are, among others, children in street situations, children of refugees and migrants, LGBT children, and Roma children.

Original Text by Mila Tolstoj, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

Kosovo is not an easy country for children and women. Children from Kosovo and neighboring regions are trafficked for begging and are vulnerable to trafficking for sexual exploitation. In the country, violence against children in the home is widespread and considered acceptable by significant percentages of the population.

Recent surveys suggest that corporal punishment and domestic violence continue to be widespread problems in Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities. Another endemic problem in the country concerns violence in schools, violence between students, gender-based violence, but also violence by teachers against children.

According to a UNICEF study, in Kosovo, child labor is “widely tolerated and accepted”. According to a 2013-14 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), 8% of children between 5 and 11 years, 14% between 12 and 14 years, and 26% between 15 and 17 years are engaged in economic activities. 12% of children between 5 and 17 years who are not in school are involved in child labor, with a total of 7% of children working in conditions considered hazardous.

UNICEF research from 2016 on social norms found that gender-based violence in Kosovo is influenced by strong social norms, social expectations, and factors that encourage violent practices against women and children. Female and male gender identities, according to the study, are constructed, communicated, and promoted in the family environment and are further nurtured in schools and society at large.

The MICS survey also found a strong acceptance of violence against women. Overall, 33% of women aged 15-49 believe that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife when she neglects her children (28%), goes out without telling her husband (17%), or argues with him (14%). Psychological or physical punishment is also the order of the day for children: 61% of young respondents aged between 1 and 14 had experienced at least one form of psychological or physical punishment from family members during the previous month. Punishments are a necessary part of children’s education.

The situation is undoubtedly aggravated by the failure of state institutions to take adequate measures to combat child abuse and trafficking, which has often led to serious consequences for victims and their families, especially females. Several women and children have been victims of domestic violence and rape as a result of gaps in the chain of institutional responsibility. Such negligence by state institutions has been the subject of civil and human rights research.

Judges imposed lenient sentences on convicted traffickers, and prosecutors continued to downgrade trafficking cases to a lesser crime. Observers reported that the non-specialization of prosecutors and judges resulted in lenient sentences or cases downgraded to a lesser crime, especially cases involving emotional control or psychological coercion of a child victim.

A report commissioned in December 2006 by the then president of Romania, Traian Băsescu, outlines all the main themes of Romanian communism. Prisons and torture, the single party and propaganda, education, the status of minorities, the abortion ban, resistance in the mountains, and more are analyzed with attention to detail and depth. However, one important theme is missing, essential for understanding the Romanian reality: the world of the Romanian orphanage. This is a sad approach that effectively amounts to a second abandonment of vulnerable children in Romania.

In 1966, a decree was issued to ban abortion. The consequences were extremely brutal: more than 10,000 women died as a result of abortions performed in secret and unsuitable conditions; the number of unwanted children increased exponentially, and abandonment became a mass phenomenon. The situation worsened in 1970 with the passing of a law encouraging the abandonment of children in state institutions. Children unwanted by their parents, for personal and financial reasons, were left in cradles, orphanages, and centers for disabled children.

In the last 10 years, the structural problems of the protection system have begun to be studied: institutional violence, the widespread practice of administering neuroleptics, sexual abuse, prostitution rings, and illegal adoptions.

Many young people who have experienced institutionalization are involved in efforts to recover the memory of the care institution: accounts of abuse are multiplying. The report commissioned by President Băsescu mentions 41 types of abuse, some of which were also used in orphanages and children’s homes: a veritable horror list.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the political and moral foundations and limits of the orphanage in Romania were laid. More than 700 children’s homes, tens of thousands of employees, and more than 100,000 children. A real laboratory for the social experiment whose aim was to create the new man, as the regime perceived him: totally devoted to the leaders and involved in the construction of the socialist paradise. The exact human dimensions of this institutional mechanism are not known because Romanian statistics have never been precise. A conservative estimate, based on existing data, indicates that at least 500,000 children have passed through protective institutions in the last 75 years.

original text by Daniel Rucăreanu, adapted by Vera Pagnoni

In recent years in Greece, an increasing number of artists have come out of the closet and publicly declared that famous actors had sexually harassed them. The scandal started with the confession of former Olympic sailing medallist Sofia Bekatorou, who testified that she had been sexually abused by a senior official of the Hellenic Sailing Federation in 1998. Her testimony convinced dozens of other women in the entertainment industry to report similar cases. In February 2021, the former director of the Greek National Theatre Dimitris Lignadis was arrested on charges of carrying out numerous rapes, including against children, in 2010 and 2015.

But searching for information on abuse in Greece is difficult; one could almost think that there was no abuse. However, the situation is serious: there is no official national system of documentation of child abuse data that educates and subsequently obliges professionals involved in child protection to submit reports.

Whatever data is collected includes the fragmented attempts of various authorities and services, which employ their proper initiative, methodology, and documentation tools to address the situation. The result is inadequate and inaccurate information about the extent of the problem of any form of abuse in Greece.

The data in the reports by the National Referral Mechanism for the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking (NRM) are derived from reports on victims of human trafficking, both adults and minors. These victims were identified and/or received protection services from from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020; the also data stems from victim cases being monitored in 2019, who continued to receive services during the year in question, i.e., 2020. In 2019, in the first year of operation of the NRM, 154 cases of potential victims of human trafficking were documented.

The number of NRM 2020 reports from public authorities (police, hospitals, shelters, etc.), as well as from NGOs and international organizations amounted to 167, of which 74 concerned children (39 boys and 35 girls). Of these children, 33 were from Bulgaria, 23 from Greece, 9 from Romania, 6 from Albania, and the remaining 3 from Africa. In the majority of cases, they were children exploited for begging, while two cases were potential victims of sexual exploitation. In most cases of trafficked children, recruitment took place in their country of origin in both 2019 and 2020. For the year 2020 specifically, 22 of the above-mentioned child victims of human trafficking were recruited in Greece.

One institution that published the data for 2020 – the Child’s Smile (To hamogelo tou pediou) – based its findings on 1,123 reports of child abuse involving 2,009 children (786 were aged 0-6, 657 were aged 7-12, 340 were aged 13-18, and 226 were of unknown age). Of these reports, 803 cases were brought to court, while 31 cases involved suspicion of sexual abuse (8 boys and 23 girls), and the vast majority (1,026) were cases of neglect or abandonment. According to data documented by the organization, 1,799 children were abused by members of their immediate family and 203 by  “another person”. In the “immediate family”, the abusers were identified as both parents, only the mother, only the father, members of the extended family, and third parties.

But what was revealed is, according to the experts, only the tip of the iceberg.