Three clergy abused me - claim

Vienna - Child sex charges hit the Roman Catholic Church in Austria on Tuesday after a man said he was sexually abused by three clergy as a child.

A Catholic boarding school spoke out meanwhile about another case in the 1980s.


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A 53-year-old Austrian told national radio Oe1 on Tuesday that he was abused for six years from the age of 11 by two priests and once by a trainee priest who is now abbot of Sankt Peter monastery in Salzburg.

The two padres - one of whom has left the Church, while the other has died - were arrested in Morocco in 2005 on sex tourism charges, according to Salzburg prosecutors. An Austrian court found one of them guilty of abusing underage Moroccan boys, they said.

The 53-year-old victim said he kept quiet about the abuse for years but eventually confronted the abbot last November. He said he was offered €5 000 to take no further action.

On Monday, Sankt Peter monastery put out a statement saying the abbot had apologised for the abuse and submitted his resignation.

Meanwhile, the head of a Catholic boarding school in Mehrerau, in Vorarlberg province, revealed that abuse of a student in the 1980s had been hushed up.

A priest admitted carrying out the abuse and was reassigned to neighbouring Tyrol province, Abbot Anselm van der Linde told the daily Vorarlberger Nachrichten.

The boy's father decided at the time not to press charges as long as the cleric, now 74, left the school, he added.

Tyrol's bishop was informed of the case and the padre was made to undergo therapy, but he was still a priest today, van der Linde said.

The revelations in Austria follow a scandal in neighbouring Germany over sexual abuse in Catholic schools dating back several decades. - AFP

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