[Organised abuse in the GDR - A Secondary Analysis of the Victims' Perspective]

Organiszed abuse (OA) is a form of long-lasting, mostly sexualized violence against children, youth, or women by networked perpetrators for financial and power-related enrichment. Individual reports and historical analyses imply this violence could have taken place in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This study is the first to shed light on OA in the GDR from the perspective of those affected.

N=10 confidential hearings and written reports of victims of sexualized violence in childhood and adolescence in the GDR, which were made available by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany, were analyzed using content-structuring qualitative content analysis.

OA was described with multiple forms of sexualized, physical and psychological violence. Those affected place OA in different contexts, with other categories (perpetrators, duration/frequency of violence, motives) sometimes dependent on these. The consequences for victims are both short- and long-term in nature and occur on both health (especially psychopathological) and psychosocial levels up to the present. There were no indications of further GDR-specific characteristics of OA.

The reports of victims enable the perspective of "experienced knowledge", which has its limit where descriptions presuppose the knowledge of perpetrators (e. g., motives for violence, characteristics of violence structure). Possible political-ideological features of violence could not be discussed due to considering OA as an "ideology-free" phenomenon (in contrast to e. g. ritual abuse). In addition to definitional distinctions between different phenomena of violence, a multiperspective and multiprofessional approach is necessary to guarantee a historically sensitive continuation of research.