Thursday, March 5, 2020

Berlin To Compensate Victims of Paedophile Foster Scheme


Berlin To Compensate Victims of Paedophile Foster Scheme

The Times, Wednesday March 4, 2020 by Oliver Moody, Berlin

[ This is not a unique aberration. In the 1960s, 70s and indeed much later there were many "experiments" of this type by people so enamored of "liberation" and so devoured by hatred of "reactionaries" that they threw all caution to the winds. The liberal Establishment today are their lineal descendants and not very keen to expose the misdeeds of their own kind. I note without surprise that
 "Four years ago the Berlin Senate commissioned an inquiry into the scandal from experts at Göttingen University. Their final report has yet to be published."]



The social scientist Helmut Kentler argued that paedophilia could have “positive consequences”
Two victims of a bizarre social experiment in which Berlin’s city hall deliberately placed troubled children in the care of paedophiles are on the brink of winning compensation.

From 1969 to 2003 the authorities put at least nine boys in the hands of convicted sex offenders on the advice of a disgraced social scientist. The idea behind the Kentler experiment — named after Helmut Kentler, an academic who argued that paedophilia could have “positive consequences” — was that unruly and “feeble-minded” children would benefit from adult sexual attention. 

In the late 1960s Kentler persuaded West Berlin’s ruling Senate that the homeless boys would jump at the opportunity to be fostered by paedophiles and would be “head over heels in love” with their new father figures.

One of the boys, referred to in legal proceedings as Marco, had been taken into care after suffering physical abuse at the hands of his father. In 1989, aged six, he was placed with a convicted child abuser. A year later this foster father, Fritz H, began going into Marco’s room for a “cuddle”. Marco has claimed in an interview with Der Spiegel, a weekly news magazine, that for ten years he was repeatedly beaten and raped by Fritz H, until he reached the threshold of adulthood and fought back.

Another of Fritz H’s victims, given the cover name Sven, was abandoned by his parents at the age of seven and contracted hepatitis B on the streets of Berlin. In 1990 he was entrusted to the paedophile and suffered repeated sexual assaults.

Fritz H is alleged to have recorded the abuses on a video camera and kept the boys isolated from the outside world in his flat. From 1974 Fritz H, who has since died, fostered four other boys. One of them, who is referred to as Sascha, lived in the flat at the same time as Sven and Marco. Sascha was allegedly neglected and denied medical care, leading to his death in 2003 from pneumonia.

It is not known how many children were subjected to the Kentler experiment. Four years ago the Berlin Senate commissioned an inquiry into the scandal from experts at Göttingen University. Their final report has yet to be published. At the beginning of the experiment, Kentler, who died in 2008, was regarded as one of Germany’s foremost sexologists and often appeared as an expert witness in court cases. He boasted of having secured the acquittal of several alleged paedophiles.

In 1970 he urged the Bundestag to decriminalise sex between adults and children in West Germany, arguing that teenagers were “almost always more seriously damaged” by the prosecution of their abusers than by the abuse itself. Nine years later he published a book in which it was claimed that numerous scientific studies had produced no evidence of paedophilia’s negative effects.

Marco and Sven were so badly scarred by their ordeal that they have been unable to work. In 2016 they brought a formal complaint to the city authorities.The Senate has now agreed in principle to pay them compensation as part of an out-of-court settlement, according to Der Tagesspiegel, a daily newspaper, but there is a dispute over the extent of the damages.

One of the victims’ lawyers is said to have pressed for a lump sum of €100,000 and a monthly pension of €2,500, backdated to the end of the fostering arrangement in 2001. The city of Berlin has said that it is working on a “solution that would satisfy the interests of those affected”.


And this is a German report from 2016 when the Inquiry by the Berlin Senate commenced


Child Abuse Head of German 'Pedophilia Project' Believed Sex Was Beneficial for Street Kids

 16.12.2016  Sputnik Germany

The scandal surrounding the Berlin Senate's project, in which homeless teens were deliberately sent to pedophile men who were employed as their foster fathers and took care of them, is gaining more and more attention across Germany.

A study by the Institute for Democratic Research at the University of Göttingen is supposed to reveal further details about the scandal.In this regard, Sputnik Germany discussed the issue with the head member of the investigation team, Teresa Nentwig, who revealed shocking details about the project.
"Men who had been convicted of sexual contact with minors were appointed by the Berlin leadership as guardians. Children and young people, who lived on the street before that, had to "pay" for a warm bed, good food and clean clothes, engaging in sexual relationships with their caregivers," Nentwig said.
The initiator of this project was Helmut Kentler, psychologist and professor at the University of Hannover. His idea was that the sexual intercourse should have had a positive impact on the personal development of the neglected boys.

The project was aimed at the so-called "children of the Zoo station," involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. At that time, Nentwig said, the Berlin authorities were helpless and didn't know how they should behave toward these young people, and so were ready to carry out even such "experiments".

Such willingness can be "partly explained by the historical context," Nentvig stated.
"There are many things that must be considered as a complex issue. The 1960s were a time of sexual liberalization and educational breakthrough […]. There was also a striving for a full legalization of sexual relations between adolescents and adults, and Helmut Kentler was one of those who promoted this initiative in a special committee of the Bundestag," the expert said.
In 2013, the Senate started investigations into this experiment. However, according to Nentwig, a full-scale investigation proved to be impossible because not all relevant documents could be declassified.
"The fact is that access to them can be granted only after a certain period of time. There have been initiatives to reduce this period: some of the applications were approved, but others were rejected for reasons connected with the protection of personal information," the expert said.
Communication with the victims has also proven problematic. According to Nentwig, they do not want to describe their experiences and recall their terrible past.

However, the expert believes that it is necessary to continue the investigation and, in particular, examine the case of the Odenwald School, a boarding school where the Berlin Senate sent underage boys, many of whom are assumed to have later become subject to sexual abuse.




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