Abusing priest profile same as lay offenders

Germany’s Catholic Church has presented a report saying that only 12 per cent of priests who abused minors could be classified as paedophiles.

The report, commissioned in 2010 after a wave of abuse revelations, examined 78 abuse cases dating back to the 1960s. “There are no significant differences to results found in the general population in Germany,” said Dr Norbert Leygraf, one of the experts asked to review study results.

The study found that, in over a third of the cases examined, the abusing priest exhibited homosexual tendencies.