Commission on the Dillinger case: "The facts are frightening"

Church - Commission on the Dillinger case: "The facts are frightening"

More and more facts are coming to light about the abuse committed by the priest Edmund Dillinger, who died at the end of 2022. The facts presented in a second report are "shocking and incriminating", the independent investigation commission in the diocese of Trier announced on Wednesday. Dillinger's deeds spanned "many decades and many continents - often using his voluntary and above all ecclesiastical contacts".

The extent of the cases was "depressing". The commission criticized the "extensive inactivity not only of the diocese" in the case. "The failure to act and the fact that so many looked the other way hurts and annoys."

The former priest from Friedrichsthal in Saarland is alleged to have sexually abused young people from the 1970s onwards and photographed them in sometimes pornographic poses. After the man's death, Dillinger's nephew found dozens of unframed slides in his house - and went public with them in April.

In the spring, the investigative commission entrusted the former Koblenz public prosecutor Jürgen Brauer and the former deputy head of the public prosecutor's office in Trier, Ingo Hromada, with investigating the case in a separate project. Their work should be completed in the first half of 2024. Brauer hinted that it could take longer due to expected feedback from those affected.

The report presented on Wednesday states that nine victims are now known by name. Some had only recently reported sexually abusive behavior by the Catholic priest: On a vacation trip with altar boys to Tunisia or in his apartment in Hermeskeil.

Dillinger lay on or next to her at night, kissed or fondled her. "The incident was an incisive experience for me. I put up a fierce fight," said one victim. A case of sexual abuse of a 15-year-old during a pilgrimage to Rome in 1970 has been known for some time.

The report mentions numerous photos showing scantily clad young men. A total of around 4,400 slides or photos from Dillinger's estate were analyzed by the Mainz public prosecutor's office. Ten images were classified as criminally relevant youth pornography, while this could not be clearly proven for twelve images.

The report also states that all of the young people "photographed in sexual poses" by the former Catholic priest "were victims of sexual abuse". "Their number cannot be reliably estimated." No picture shows sexual acts.

Steffen Dillinger, the nephew of the former priest, said on Wednesday about the investigation so far: "This is the first time I've seen that the matter is obviously being taken seriously. That was never apparent to me before, at any point. Now there's definitely some meat on the bone."

The files of the Mainz, Saarbrücken and Trier public prosecutor's offices have been inspected, Brauer and Hromada announced. The files in Mainz also included two calendars meticulously kept by Dillinger from 2013 and 2016, in which he also noted telephone calls and meetings.

In view of the information content, it was "very difficult" that the Saarbrücken public prosecutor's office had ordered the destruction of the calendars, which were available from 1967 onwards, among other things. "They would have been a source of information," said Brauer. 52 calendars were destroyed. This represents "a bitter loss for the investigation, the extent of which cannot be estimated."

The case made headlines in the summer: at the beginning of July, the public prosecutor's office had seized material burned after initially seeing no basis for investigating possible accomplices who were still alive. Dead bodies are not being investigated.

In mid-July, the authorities then opened an investigation against unknown persons on the initial suspicion of sexual abuse of young people. The aim is to find witnesses who can provide information on any perpetrators who are still alive and any crimes in the complex that are not yet time-barred. "So far, neither a specific crime nor a specific perpetrator has been identified," the spokesperson for the public prosecutor's office told the German Press Agency.

However, the investigations have not yet been completed and are being conducted in various directions. According to the spokesman, extensive documents have been analyzed and witnesses have been heard. Dillinger died at the age of 87.

The public prosecutor's office in Trier had investigated Dillinger for sexual abuse in 2012, but the proceedings were discontinued due to the statute of limitations. Since then, the diocese had banned the man from interacting with children and young people and he was no longer allowed to hold church services.

Brauer and Hromada said they hoped that other victims would come forward. They are also appealing to people and institutions who have been approached by victims to support the work of the commission. "If it is not possible to bring together the findings available in various places, there is a risk that the investigation as a whole will remain piecemeal," the authors said.

"We are disappointed that access to files in other dioceses, for example, is as difficult as it is," said the chairman of the commission, Gerhard Robbers. In an effort to clarify the situation, cooperation with non-diocesan authorities "could be improved". He appealed to the diocesan authorities to demand this support "emphatically".