Pastor von Ruggell is said to have abused Art
Archdiocese of Vaduz
Former pastor von Ruggell is said to have sexually abused an eight-year-old – Princely High Court resumes proceedings that have been suspended
Pastor Thomas Jäger is suspected of sexually abusing a girl in 2019. A house search revealed large amounts of child pornography. the public prosecutor’s office establishes the procedure on the basis of repeated evidence. A new judge has been responsible since the beginning of the year and has reopened the procedure. Jäger is by no means the only questionable figure in the diocese of Vaduz.
The Liechtenstein Higher Court has resumed the investigations into the former pastor of Ruggell. Thomas Jäger, who served as a pastor in Ruggell until 2020, is suspected of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl.
As early as October 2019, the public prosecutor had applied to the regional court for preliminary investigations against the former pastor. But the criminal proceedings were discontinued less than four months later due to a lack of evidence, as the “Liechtenstein Fatherland” writes. Since January 1, 2023, a new judge has been responsible for the Jäger case. And unlike his retired predecessor, he apparently does not consider the matter to be over yet.
196 child porn websites
Specifically, Jäger is accused of having lured an eight-year-old girl, who serves in Ruggell, to the vicarage under a pretext in October 2019. There he pushed up the girl’s T-shirt and massaged her chest, as the girl’s parents describe it in the SRF “Rundschau” report, which was broadcast in the summer of 2022.
During a search of the house, the investigators found self-made videos with a “clear focus on the child’s breasts”, child pornography and indications of right-wing extremist sentiment, according to the “Liechtensteiner Vaterland”. A copy of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” and “a list of domestic neo-Nazis” were found. In addition, a total of 196 websites with pornographic content involving children and young people were found in the browser history of Jäger’s mobile phone.
In August 2020, the Princely Regional Court sentenced Jäger to a conditional fine of CHF 27,000 for the consumption of child pornography. The pastor appealed, so the High Court again referred the case back to the District Court for trial, where it hangs to this day. Thus, the presumption of innocence applies.
The public prosecutor’s office dropped the sexual abuse case after just four months. She told SRF in June that the person opposite could not be proven with certainty that Jäger had actually touched the eight-year-old girl’s chest, adding:
“Furthermore, the girl’s breast was not yet developed.”
The public prosecutor’s office withdrew the second part of the reasoning a little later.
An attack on the Lord
Jäger’s lawyer writes on request that his client cannot comment on the ongoing proceedings. So far, Jäger has denied all allegations. He claimed that strangers had misused his cell phone and watched the child pornography.
He has set up his own website where he calls on his followers to donate and presents himself as the victim of a smear campaign. In a video he explains there that the “attack”, the hate and the rush are not for him, but for “the Lord”. And: “Together as a church we will weather this storm like so many others”.
In this case, the Church is primarily the Archdiocese of Vaduz. Archbishop Wolfgang Haas had defended Pastor Jäger for a long time. A full four months passed before Jäger had to resign from his ministry after the eight-year-old girl’s parents filed a complaint. The Archdiocese of Vaduz informed SRF in June:
“On the part of the Church, all canonically required measures have been and are being correctly fulfilled.”
In 2006, the German diocese of Limburg “rejected his ordination because of serious doubts about the suitability of the 48-year-old,” writes the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” about Pastor Jäger. He then went to Vaduz, “where Archbishop Wolfgang Haas ordained him as a priest without hesitation.”
“Reservoir for ultra-right priests”
Like researching the “Southgerman newspaper” (SZ), which also appeared in the “Tagesanzeiger”, Thomas Jäger is by far not the only questionable figure in the diocese of Vaduz. For years Archbishop Wolfgang Haas has been consecrating men rejected by other bishops as priests. In this way, the Archdiocese of Vaduz has developed into a center for ecclesiastical, political and other conspicuous priests in the German-speaking area. The SZ writes:
“Corona slobs and world conspirators are among them, as well as other strange characters. With the Archbishop’s blessing, they are evangelising in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, as well as on the Internet.”
The SZ quotes the Liechtenstein theologian Günther Boss as saying that Vaduz has become a catchment area for church-politically reactionary and politically ultra-right priests. According to Boss, the archbishop is a fundamentalist on the far right of the Catholic Church. “Exactly this clientele gathers around him, and he distributes them further”.