Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests, Deacons and Male Members of Religious Orders in the Area of the German Bishops' Conference (the MHG Study)

A research project commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz) from a consortium of researchers at the universities of Mannheim, Heidelberg and Giessen, whose initials give the study its short name. Researchers reviewed 38,156 personnel files of Catholic clergy across all German dioceses covering 1946 to 2014, and their summary, released September 2018, identified at least 1,670 clergy, 4.4 percent of those whose files were reviewed, implicated in the abuse of at least 3,677 minors, two thirds of them boys and most under fourteen at the time. The study states plainly that its count is a floor: personnel files that had themselves been altered or destroyed mean the true totals are almost certainly higher, and the researchers estimated thousands more unreported cases could exist beyond the 3,677 the files themselves document.