A look back towards the future - from our archives

"For a long time, sexual violence against children and adolescents was one of the best hidden taboo topics in the Catholic Church and society as a whole [...].” Since 2010, this taboo has been irrevocably broken, as it was summed up by Vanessa Görtz and Marianne Heimbach-Steins in their leading article from 2011. Since then, a broad discussion in society and church has taken place and various books and studies have been published. Therefore, Philipp Müller examines again the topic of sexual violence in the Catholic Church in his current leading article. He presents the perspectives from those affected by sexual violence as well as current studies from various disciplines. At the end of his article he devotes his study to the question of prevention.

With these two leading articles, Theologische Revue offers a comprehensive look at the literature on sexual abuse over the past ten years. Finally, we would like to refer to an anthology that was presented in January this year which focuses on analyzes of sexual violence against minors by priests in order to shed light on "the systemic conditions which could lead to sexual abuse and its cover-up could occur".