Dozens of enquiries over abuse of minors received by Lutheran Church Council

Majority of cases are from 10-15 years ago

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The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland has received dozens of contacts from people who have reported that as children they were the victims of sexual abuse either within the church or in its revivalist movements.
     
Within the Conservative Laestadian revival movement alone, investigations have found around 20 victims of pedophiles.
      Some of the perpetrators have been convicted, other cases are currently being examined by police, and in some cases the incident took place so long ago as to have exceeded the statute of limitations on such offences.
      The matter was first reported in the Turku daily Turun Sanomat on Tuesday.
     
The suspected perpetrators have not been ministers of the church as such, but other workers within the church organisation or lay volunteers in the revivalist movements.
      The victims are both men and women, but in many of the most recent cases coming to light it has been women in particular who have reached out for help, reports Martti Esko, director of family issues at the Church Council.
      A couple of new enquiries came in on Tuesday morning.
      The cases of abuse are scattered all over finland, and the council is unwilling to elaborate further and specify particular communities.
      Only a few of the cases concern the present-day or an ongoing situation.
      According to the Bishop of Mikkeli Seppo Häkkinen, those victims who have approached the church for help have been directed to professional counselling.
     
Most of the incidents of abuse that have come to light recently date back some 10 to 15 years, and in one case the alleged abuse took place fully 60 years ago.
      "The spread is quite large. These people are now adults", reports Martti Esko.
      According to Bishop Häkkinen, the greater part of the cases of abuse that have been reported took place in small and closed communities.
     
Häkkinen believes that the victims have felt encouraged to speak out now about their experiences in the wake of the extensive coverage in the press of pedophilia scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, and also following stories closer to home of incest and aggravated sexual molestation that took place in the 1970s and 1980s within a Swedish-speaking Laestadian congregation in the town of Pietarsaari on the west coast (see linked article).
      "The Finnish Lutheran Church does not tolerate any form of sexual abuse or the covering up of such actions. If these things exist, they must be brought to light immediately and they must be stopped. We are talking about criminal offences here", Häkkinen insists.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Incest victim of Laestadian preacher tries to piece his childhood together (12.1.2010)

Links:
  Revival Movements in Finland (EVL)
  Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (EVL)
  Conservative Laestadianism (Wikipedia)

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