SOS Children's Villages: Major Donor With Inappropriate Interest in Minors Also Targeted the Vienna Boys' Choir

Funcke-Bonnet lived until his death in Aschbach-Markt in Lower Austria. There, he was a well-known man. His "inclinations were also known," as a neighbor says. In the photo, community jubilarians are being honored; they have no connection to the allegations. Photo: zVg

Of course the farmer's wife knows this man. In a colorful apron, she stands in the doorway of her four-sided Mostviertel farmhouse. "He was into children," she recalls. Her father-in-law had already chased him off the farm in the 1970s. Because Funcke-Bonnet wanted "the boy to sleep in his bed."

Funcke-Bonnet is that major donor who allegedly subjected boys between the ages of 13 and 16 to inappropriate treatment in a Nepalese SOS Children's Villages between 2010 and 2014. Forty years earlier, a farmer had thrown him out. He protected his son from the alleged individual with inappropriate interest in minors.

What the farmer managed to do at the time, Helmut Kutin apparently failed to do. The president of SOS Children's Villages Austria and SOS Children's Villages International allowed the man to sleep in the Nepalese SOS Children's Villages Lumbini for years.

Kutin, as Falter uncovered in early November, knew about the man's inappropriate inclinations. Nevertheless, he courted the major donor, wrote him Christmas cards, visited him — and invited him to Children's Village facilities in Nepal. In 2013, SOS Children's Villages even helped send a Nepalese youth to the Mostviertel region.

The major donor was long a phantom. There is little to be found online about the scion of a German brewing dynasty. In August 2022, he died at the age of 93 as a citizen with no criminal record.

Falter investigations into Funcke-Bonnet now bring disturbing facts to light. Funcke-Bonnet sought proximity to children his entire life. He appeared in the dressing rooms of the Vienna Boys' Choir, was a regular guest at Catholic youth group events, gifted a kindergarten a sculpture. Funcke-Bonnet moved in elevated circles, was friends with high-ranking politicians — and well acquainted with Helmut Kutin, the successor of the famous Children's Village founder Hermann Gmeiner. Gmeiner is also alleged to have subjected children to inappropriate treatment.

The international SOS umbrella organization is struggling with the process of coming to terms, however. To this day, Gmeiner and Kutin are reportedly venerated in Children's Villages around the world, as informants tell Falter. At the center of criticism now stands Domenico Parisi. Since July, the Italian has been chairman of SOS Children's Villages International.

Parisi himself grew up in a Children's Village in Italy. Kutin, employees claim, is described by him as a "mentor and close friend." For this reason, the allegations against the Children's Village grandee have reportedly not been clearly communicated to this day — and therefore have still not reached every Children's Village branch.

Kutin was more closely connected with Funcke-Bonnet than previously known. This is shown by Falter's investigations. The trail leads to Liechtenstein, to the Lutro Foundation. The major donor's assets were held there, and Kutin also sat on the foundation board for 13 years, from 2003 to 2016.

Lutro first appears in the Liechtenstein tax administration in 1998. Its purpose: supporting charitable and benevolent institutions. The principality offers foundations a high degree of confidentiality; the names of the founders do not have to be made public, and they also benefit from tax advantages.

Almost one million euros flowed through the Lutro Foundation — and not, as usual, through an Austrian donation account — to Nepal. With the money, SOS Children's Villages built family houses.

For example, in the Nepalese Children's Village Lumbini. At the opening ceremony in 2010, Funcke-Bonnet sat next to Christian Moser, 17-year managing director of SOS Children's Villages Austria, alleged accomplice and concealer of inappropriate treatment of children. Only after the Falter revelations about grievances in Austrian Children's Villages did the organization dismiss him.

"On the occasion of the opening of the SOS Children's Villages Lumbini, we placed Mr. Funcke-Bonnet especially in the spotlight," Kutin wrote to Children's Village colleagues. And three years later, he noted in a letter to Funcke-Bonnet: "I wish with all my heart that you can finally endure your difficult childhood and youth through the visits to Nepal."

An expert report (Independent Special Commission, ISC), commissioned by SOS Children's Villages International in 2021, classifies the money transfer through the Liechtenstein foundation as "unusual and potentially high-risk with regard to money laundering and terrorist financing." On the foundation board, alongside Kutin, sits a company that appears in the "leaked confidential financial documents," that leaked trove of politicians, celebrities, and companies that parked their assets in tax havens. Authorized signatory for the company was Angelika Moosleithner-Batliner, daughter of the controversial trustee Herbert Batliner. Batliner, who died in 2019, managed foundations in which the CDU hid party donations in the 1990s.

That Funcke-Bonnet's large cash donation was made outside of official fundraising through a foundation in Liechtenstein is described by SOS Children's Villages today as an "unusual approach." The reasons for this "could not be traced in the course of our internal investigations." All documents have now been submitted to the reform commission under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court President and Neos politician Irmgard Griss. Griss is reportedly tasked with coming to terms with the SOS scandal.

While Kutin courted the major donor, people in a Lower Austrian community had long been aware of Funcke-Bonnet's inappropriate inclinations.

In the early 1970s, Funcke-Bonnet moved from Germany to Aschbach-Markt; his house still stands behind a thuja hedge today. "I forbade my son from going there," says a neighbor. A neighbor tells that Funcke-Bonnet was often abroad, raved about Asia, and proudly showed her photo albums full of children. In Aschbach-Markt, he gave children chocolate and coloring books, invited them to his home, went swimming with them. In front of the kindergarten stand three stone fish, financed by Funcke-Bonnet.

The four-sided farm, a few minutes' drive outside the town center, was his first registered address in the area. Today, the man whom Funcke-Bonnet wanted to bring into his bed in the 1970s lives there — until his father threw him out. Rumors that Funcke-Bonnet interfered with children had always been around, he tells Falter. Whether anything really happened, he does not know. But the man from Germany was always wherever children were, such as at the local Catholic youth group. Several times he visited various activities as a "guest."

His contact with the Catholic children's and youth group was reportedly established by Father Wolfgang Streicher. Streicher was a priest in the town in the early 1970s. Why he took Funcke-Bonnet, a strange adult man, along on the youth group outings is unclear. Father Streicher is deceased. The Seitenstetten Abbey, where Streicher lived, did not provide any information by editorial deadline.

Funcke-Bonnet already cultivated a close relationship with Austrian children when he still lived in Germany. In Meisenheim, a small community in Rhineland-Palatinate, the family owned a noble industrial villa and a brewery, once the region's largest employer. In the 1950s, in his late 20s, Funcke-Bonnet became interested in the Vienna Boys' Choir.

At that time, in the sailor uniform of the boys' choir: Norbert Steger, eleven years old, decades later federal party chairman of the FPÖ, vice-chancellor, and trade minister. "He accompanied us on tours, gave us chocolate, was present in the changing room," Steger tells Falter. "He was a person everyone knew."

Another former choirboy, now an old man, also remembers Funcke-Bonnet: "He always took photos and laughed a lot." In the German town of Meisenheim, the boys reportedly visited his brewery. Funcke-Bonnet was also present at the annual summer retreat of the choirboys in Hinterbichl in East Tyrol.

The former choirboys cannot recall specific transgressions. Whether the man was granted access to the private areas of the young singers in exchange for donations is not known. According to the Vienna Boys' Choir, the donation receipts from the 1950s no longer exist.

As an adult, Norbert Steger remained in contact with Funcke-Bonnet. From Nepal, the politician received handmade postcards from Funcke-Bonnet. Depicted on them was the old man together with Children's Village children. "It seemed strange to me," Steger says today.

SOS Children's Villages in any case did not take Funcke-Bonnet's conspicuous behavior and boundary violations seriously enough: the warning cries of educators from the SOS Children's Villages Altmünster, where he grabbed boys inappropriately in 2014; the warning cries from Nepal, where a ban on Funcke-Bonnet's visits was imposed from 2015. In a letter from that year, he recounted that children lay in his bed: "They was (sic!) happy therefore and homefeeling."

Allegations against the major donor also appear in the 1,000-page ISC report. In the non-anonymized summary, which Falter now has access to, it states that a Nepalese Children's Village employee warned about Funcke-Bonnet as early as 2012. She allegedly saw the major donor leaving a room with his pants open while a child was present. In 2014, he allegedly kissed a child.

Kutin, who knew about many allegations against Funcke-Bonnet since at least 2015, did not report the man to the authorities but continued to keep him happy. The suspicion: Kutin covered up the serious accusations against the major donor, and the organization later concealed the cover-up by Kutin.

By 2023 at the latest, when the ISC report was completed, all 136 countries that encompass SOS Children's Villages were informed about the major donor case and Kutin's role. The report states that the SOS Children's Villages head "privately" asked two employees to support the major donor. Furthermore, Kutin's close ties to Funcke-Bonnet may have led to a delay in criminal investigations.

But there were no consequences for Kutin. As honorary president, he was even allowed to participate in the General Assembly in Innsbruck in 2023. And now something happened that also puts SOS International in a difficult position. When representatives of individual nations protested against the approach at the time, the heads of the umbrella organization ignored the critical voices.

Only when Falter made its investigations about cases of inappropriate treatment in Children's Villages public did the organization react: Austria is expelled from the umbrella organization.

While statues of Gmeiner are being toppled and parks renamed in Austria, the former icon continues to be venerated in Children's Villages around the globe. At the end of November, the daily newspaper Telegraph India featured a photo of a decorated Gmeiner bust at a celebration in an Indian SOS Children's Villages. After Falter's inquiry to SOS Children's Villages India, the golden head of Gmeiner disappeared from the newspaper. The text was also rewritten. To Falter, it is said: the celebration had already taken place in June; the article was only published later.

There is considerable unrest at SOS Children's Villages International. Employees accuse the leadership of continuing to downplay the allegations against Gmeiner and Kutin as an "Austria problem." In internal correspondence, employees urged weeks ago to draw harder consequences from the scandal.

The association wants to wait and is discussing how to deal with Gmeiner's name. Regarding the major donor case, the organization informs Falter that all documents have been submitted to the Vienna public prosecutor's office. "Until an official response from the public prosecutor's office, SOS Children's Villages will not comment on speculative questions or unconfirmed claims — including those based on hearsay or containing inaccuracies."

The farmer in the Mostviertel, by contrast, had to act quickly. He threw the major donor out because he wanted to protect his child.

Falter uncovered cases of inappropriate treatment in two Austrian SOS Children's Villages in mid-September. The organization promised improvement and announced that founder Hermann Gmeiner subjected at least eight boys to inappropriate treatment. At the end of October, Falter published its investigations about the major donor with inappropriate interest in minors and the former president Helmut Kutin.