Professor Sabine Andresen's public lecture "Lessons from survivors’ reports about child sexual abuse. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany"

On 26 August, from 14:15 to 15:45, Sabine Andresen, Professor of Social Pedagogy and Family Research at the Department of Educational Science, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, will give a public lecture "Lessons from survivors’ reports about child sexual abuse. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany", in Room 215 at Lossi 36. The lecture will also be broadcast at UTTV.

Since the 1990s, cases of serious violence and abuse, particularly sexual abuse in educational and social institutions of the Catholic Church, have been reported in numerous countries, including Ireland, the United States, and Australia. In many countries, commissions have been set up to investigate the widespread cases of abuse that could not be prosecuted under criminal law. The testimonies of survivors and other witnesses are used by the commissions of inquiry in their work. Since 2016, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany has collected more than 2,400 reports from survivors of child sexual abuse. A unique aspect of the German Inquiry is its mandate, which includes the investigation of two political systems, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), from 1949 to the present. The main methods it employs to achieve this task are conducting confidential hearings with survivors and other witnesses; creating a database and clarifying how archiving will take place; organising public hearings and conferences which are streamed live and can be viewed online afterwards; holding “workshop discussions” and documenting them; and publishing case studies, statements, and recommendations.

The presentation gives information about the idea, concept, process, and public effects of the work and shows parts of the new knowledge that can be seen as a result of the Independent Inquiry.

Sabine Andresen is a Professor of Social Pedagogy and Family Research at the Department of Educational Science, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and a member of the Scientific Board of the IDeA Research Centre in Frankfurt. Her research focuses on empirical studies on children’s rights, childhood vulnerability and child well-being in Germany and from an international perspective. Her research includes historical perspectives on childhood and youth. During the last decade, she also intensively focused on sexual abuse of children and young people, on sexual abuse in families, as well as on transitional justice. She was chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany for five and half years. Since 2017, she has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature (class: Humanities and Social Sciences), Mainz. In May 2024, Professor Sabine Andresen was appointed an honorary doctor by the University of Tartu.

The event is sponsored by the Baltic-German University Liaison Office through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with the funds from the German Federal Foreign Office.