Reception[edit]
Kentler did not hide the fact that he placed young people with pedophiles he knew. He reported about it in his book
Leihväter from 1989. After the magazine
EMMA had reported on his activities in 1993, he was shouted down by feminist activists at an event in
Hanover in 1993 and received a punch in the face from a listener.
[11]
Jan Feddersen praised Kentler in an obituary in the
Tageszeitung of 12 July 2008, as a "meritorious fighter for a permissive sexual morality".
[23] Some protestant church authorities expressed a similar opinion. In an obituary, the
Study Centre for Protestant Youth Work pointed out Kentler's controversial positions, but also acknowledged his work for "institutional structure and professional socialisation" and the attempts to make homosexuality socially acceptable in the church. While the Working Group of Protestant Youth in Germany immediately removed the obituary after a synod motion, the Kentler Study Centre defended Kentler without addressing his misconduct in exposing children to sexual exploitation, which was broadly presented in the motion. Rather, Helmut Kentler "has had a lasting influence on the conceptual development and the student research project in Josefstal to this day".
[24]
The
Humanist Union pays positive tribute to Kentler's person and body of work. In his obituary it says: "A lighthouse of our advisory board has gone out. Like no other, Helmut Kentler embodied the humanistic task of an enlightened sex education, and he was also a role model for public science. (...) His habitus combined the qualities of competence, authenticity and closeness in a rare way, with which Kentler impressed his readers and listeners alike ... Since he immediately aroused sympathies, many have confided in him."
[25]
Ursula Enders, the founder of the victim support association "
Zartbitter", criticizes Kentler as a man with pedosexual-friendly positions.
[26] Stephan Hebel assessed in an editorial of the
Frankfurter Rundschau in March 2010
[27] a passage from Kentler's foreword to the 1974 brochure
Zeig mal! as an "open call to paedophilia"; similarly
Alice Schwarzer expressed herself in the magazine
EMMA. The Protestant authors Andreas Späth and
Menno Aden also sharply attack Kentler in their book
Die missbrauchte Republik – Aufklärung über die Aufklärer.
[28] Due to an article by Ursula Enders in EMMA in 1997 "at the last minute"
[11] Kentler was prevented from receiving the
Magnus Hirschfeld Prize in 1997.
In
Die Zeit in October 2013
Adam Soboczynski critically examined Kentler. Soboczynski explained that
Die Zeit had offered publication opportunities to the "pedophile-friendly scientist" at the end of the 1960s with a lack of sensitivity based on the connection between
anti-fascism and sexual liberation, as Kentler had claimed in reference to
Wilhelm Reich.
[29] Georg Diez criticized this text in his column on
Spiegel online: Soboczynski had neither taken Kentler seriously nor really analysed him. His text is regarded as a series of obsessive, confused settlements with the
68er-movement, he makes hardly provable, "tightly screwed assertions"; for example that sexual liberation was regarded as an anti-fascist project.
[30]
In 2013, the political scientist
Franz Walter from the
Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research, who at the time was investigating the former position of parts of the
Greens and FDP on pedophilia, assigned Kentler a key role in German networks of pedophile activists.
[11]
Allegations against Kentler[edit]
In 2015, after public pressure, the Berlin Senate Administration commissioned a study from the political scientist Teresa Nentwig of the Institute for Democracy Research in Göttingen on Kentler's pedosexual "experiment" conducted in Berlin in the late 1960s with the support of the Youth Welfare Office. In this context the Berlin Senator for Education
Sandra Scheeres called the "experiment" at that time a
crime in state responsibility.
[31] Affected persons, who had contacted the responsible senator in 2017, expressed their disappointment about the lack of support.
[32] In 2017/18, Nentwig was also commissioned in Lower Saxony to research the effects of Kentler's activities. Kentler also dealt with young people with behavioural problems in Hanover, also had contacts with the youth welfare office in Hanover and on their behalf was supposed to provide scientific support for the first care of a lesbian couple, but this did not come about because the couple decided to withdraw from the care for personal reasons.
[33] Whether Kentler himself was sexually assaulting young people, such as his foster and adopted sons or his tutoring students, is still an open question,
[34] although his colleague
Gunter Schmidt has claimed Kentler disclosed having sexually abused one of his sons from the age thirteen and through adulthood until the son committed suicide in 1991.
[35]
In January 2018 the
Leibniz Universität Hannover announced that it had initiated further investigations into Kentler. "I am downright shocked that at that time the executive and the judiciary let themselves be swallowed up by it," said President
Volker Epping at the New Year's reception. "I am also completely irritated that the professional community of this acting Kentler did not comment, did not cry out!" Only after the completion of the project "The Role of the Sexologist in the Discourse on Pedosexuality – for example Helmut Kentler", which was funded by the
Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, did the university (nine years after Kentler's death) realise the extent of the case. The aim of the further investigation will be to examine the circumstances of Kentler's doctorate, appointment and work until his retirement. This also includes the behaviour of the university, faculty and department with regard to his person. For a proper processing of the case, contracts are awarded to external, independent persons.
[36][37]
![LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]](http://uploads.kiwifarms.st/data/avatars/l/61/61177.jpg?1699571951){kind=avatar}
was a German 
