We must remember history. Men will say that children are sexual beings. They will say this is progressive. It wasn’t then and isn’t now.

“Abuse disguised as sexual liberation

In Germany in the 1960s, people in some circles viewed sex with children not as a taboo but as progressive.
One key figure behind such thinking was the Berlin-based psychology professor Helmut Kentler. Today, it is clear that he was nothing less than a matchmaker for pedophiles. But for a long time, he was widely viewed as a visionary and one of Germany's most prominent sexologists, or sex experts.

His books on education sold well, and he was a popular expert and commentator on radio and TV. His theory of "emancipating sexual education" was based on the premise that children are also sexual beings who have are right to express their sexuality.

Liberating children's sexuality from repressive moral strictures would help to unleash energies that would in turn lead to political protest and the true democratization of German society that Kentler believed was still necessary.

Rising up against outdated moral values
During the late 1960s, a new young generation of Germans began to ask what exactly their parents and grandparents had got up to during the Nazi Third Reich.

All traditional and authoritarian moral values were subjected to critical scrutiny. The utopia of a free and unshackled society was shared by many. In this potent mood of social liberation, the previously unthinkable became thinkable: It was suddenly acceptable, it seemed, for pedophiles to indulge their sexuality with young children.

Among those that struggled to come to terms with the dark legacy of all that 1968 stood for is Germany's environmentalist Green party.

In their early days four decades ago, they even considered advocating the abolition of Paragraph 176 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalized sexual activity with children below the age of 14.

Five years later, the Greens in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia even agreed to push for the legalization of sex between adults and children as long as it was "consensual."

Abuse was also systematic at one of West Germany's most "progressive" schools: the Odenwald boarding school in the southwestern state of Hesse. As many as 900 pupils were victims of sexual abuse in the three decades from 1966 to 1989.

There is a link between the Odenwaldschule and the Kentler project: In both cases, it was Berlin's youth welfare offices that had sent what were seen as "difficult boys" to a place where they would suffer systematic abuse.


Exposed and abandoned
The current report from the University of Hildesheim has not been able to find out precisely how many youngsters were exposed to pedophile foster fathers in Berlin and West Germany. Instead, it has focussed on Foster Home H.

In an official report from 1988, Kentler gave a detailed account of how his "experiment" worked. Beginning in 1969, homeless boys were turned over to pedosexual "caretakers" for — as the perfidious system would have it — their mutual benefit. Kentler proudly commented on how he "succeeded in winning the backing of responsible local authority employees."


But the vulnerable boys were not just turned over to "pedophile caretakers." The Hildesheim report is clear: "Evidence so far gathered shows that the care homes were, in fact, men living alone, often powerful and influential men (…) from academic life, research organizations and other educational contexts."

The report points to what is described as a "network" that included everything from academic facilities to state welfare offices. Under Helmut Kentler's influence, pedophile tendencies were tolerated and defended. He, too, will never be brought to justice. Kentler died in 2008.”
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291