At least one child in every classroom in Germany is affected by sexual abuse at the hands of teachers, other school staff or fellow students, which often has serious consequences for their lives and careers.
This estimate has been made by the Independent Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. A study by the Commission shows that students who are victims of sexual abuse in schools are routinely failed by the school system.
“There were often bystanders who prioritized collegiality over the safety of children, ignoring or even concealing abuses to protect the school’s reputation,” members of the investigative commission told a press conference on Wednesday. “They found that victims developed their own strategies to avoid violence, such as skipping school or repeating a grade.”
The study’s authors evaluated 133 reports and hearings from survivors who experienced sexual abuse at a school between 1949 and 2010. About 80% of the victims were women. In both cases of abuse by peers and teachers, the vast majority of perpetrators were male.
Nearly 70% of the victims whose cases were evaluated in the study suspected that others at the school knew about the sexual abuse. “But all those affected told us that it was extremely difficult for them to receive competent assistance and support,” Julia Gebrande, chair of the independent commission, told DW.
Schools are more concerned about reputation than justice
The study involves an exemplary case from the 1990s: a teacher received complaints from sixth-grade girls about a PE teacher who kept entering their changing rooms. When he decided to investigate, he saw his co-worker enter the girls’ changing room without knocking.
When he reported this to the school administration, he was told that he must have made a mistake and that his fellow teachers “would never do anything like that” and that he was “highly sensitive about this issue.” He was also accused of “ruining the reputation of our school”.
The perpetrator was never investigated and the teacher who reported him was even asked to personally apologize. Gebrande said, “It’s a tactic of abusers to present themselves as highly engaged and willing to help. They make themselves indispensable. You can’t even imagine that a co-worker who is so likable goes on to abuse children.”
Odenwaldschule: hundreds of cases of sexual abuse
The issue of sexual abuse in German schools came to wider public attention in 2010. berlin morning post The newspaper reported on cases of child sexual abuse at Canisius-Kolleg Berlin, a private Catholic prep school.
This prompted hundreds of victims from other institutions to come forward, most notably the Odenwaldschule, a private boarding school in the state of Hesse.
In response to the scandal, the German government appointed the country’s first independent Federal Commissioner against Child Sexual Exploitation in 2010 and later in 2016, the Independent Commission to Investigate Child Sexual Exploitation was established.
The German Youth Institute, one of Europe’s largest social science research institutes, conducted a study in 2023 and 2024 and found that one in two of the 1,600 teenagers surveyed had experienced sexual violence in the previous year.
However, there is no comprehensive empirical data on sexual abuse in schools and sexual abuse has only been investigated in two public schools in Germany.
“There are still no structures in place to deal with this issue in schools or school supervisory authorities,” Gebrande said. “So we want this to be a core element of teacher training.”
‘I felt abandoned, unsafe and helpless’
Another major problem highlighted in the new study is that many victims do not have the words to describe what happened to them and are often unable to recognize sexual abuse.
In one case from the 1970s, a woman named Julia told the commission about a sexual relationship she had with a 32-year-old art teacher over several years, starting when she was 13 years old.
It was when she read a newspaper article about a similar case much later in her life that “it became very clear to me that what happened to me was sexual abuse.”
In another case from the 1990s, Lee, a trans woman who was then living in her old gender identity as a boy, was repeatedly verbally, physically and sexually abused by groups of boys in the tenth grade.
She mustered the courage to confide in a teacher she trusted, but she felt ashamed and didn’t know how to describe the sexual abuse she experienced. Instead of offering help, the teacher told her this was something the kids should figure out among themselves and that it would get worse if adults got involved.
She was told that some degree of “roughness and conflict” was normal at that age – especially among boys.
“I felt abandoned, unsafe and helpless,” Lee told the commission. There were never any consequences for the perpetrators: “Their behavior was also reinforced by the fact that nothing stood in their way.”
A new law to fight child sexual abuse
A new law to strengthen the federal framework against sexual child exploitation came into force in July this year. Under the law, an advisory council of survivors will be appointed. It will also begin an annual study on the prevalence of sexual abuse among 14- and 15-year-olds starting in 2026.
As well as planned institutional changes, Gebrande hopes the new study will encourage people to address child sexual abuse in their local communities, coming to terms with their own school histories and listening to those affected.
“In our experience, investigations are conducted only when victims put pressure on institutions through the media,” he said.
Edited by: Reena Goldenberg
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