The former sports teacher Wolfgang S. said it was "a sad fact that I abused children and young people for years under pseudo-educational pretexts." He said there was "no excuse."
The confession follows revelations on Thursday that dozens of students had been abused in the top Berlin school in the 1970s and 1980s.
The school's headmaster Father Klaus Mertes sent a letter to some 600 former students at Canisius College who may have been victims of at least two priests on staff.
“The weight of the incidents overwhelmed me,” he told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. “I have promised the victims full discretion. They are free to go to the public or the police.”
The 65-year-old man Wolfgang S., currently living in South America, claimed that he had informed his Jesuit superiors of his criminal past in 1991.
Wolfgang S. reportedly left the Society of Jesus in 1992, and is suspected of having abused young boys at other Jesuit schools in Germany before then, but he did not comment on this. He also taught at Jesuit schools in Hamburg and the Black Forest region,
The confession follows revelations on Thursday that dozens of students had been abused in the top Berlin school in the 1970s and 1980s.
The school's headmaster Father Klaus Mertes sent a letter to some 600 former students at Canisius College who may have been victims of at least two priests on staff.
“With deep shock and shame, I have learned of these horrific, not only isolated, but systematic violations that went on for years,”wrote Mertes, before adding that both priests left the school in the 1980s.
“The weight of the incidents overwhelmed me,” he told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. “I have promised the victims full discretion. They are free to go to the public or the police.”
The 65-year-old man Wolfgang S., currently living in South America, claimed that he had informed his Jesuit superiors of his criminal past in 1991.
The current Jesuit provincial leader confirmed to the news magazine Der Spiegel that the order did know of Wolfgang S.'s crimes, and has hired a lawyer "to ascertain what the Jesuits specifically knew at the time, and what steps were taken."
Wolfgang S. reportedly left the Society of Jesus in 1992, and is suspected of having abused young boys at other Jesuit schools in Germany before then, but he did not comment on this. He also taught at Jesuit schools in Hamburg and the Black Forest region,
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"You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof".
John 8:44
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