SOS Children's Villages: An Institution in Ruins — and a New, Grave Suspicion

After founder Hermann Gmeiner was exposed as a perpetrator of inappropriate conduct, Falter investigations again incriminate the organization: Did its leaders hand over boys to a wealthy major donor for years?

Until a few days ago, Hermann Gmeiner was still sitting on the wooden bench in front of the Johanneskirche. Everyone was supposed to see the bronze statue of the famous Children's Village founder. Now Gmeiner has been hidden. He stands wrapped up at the municipal depot — far from the center of the small Tyrolean town of Imst.

This is where Gmeiner opened the first SOS Children's Villages after the Second World War; here he was buried in 1986; here people venerated him like a saint. That is over. The child protector Hermann Gmeiner, nominated 103 times for the Nobel Peace Prize, multiply awarded and honored by the Pope, is alleged to have committed "inappropriate conduct and inappropriate treatment" against at least eight boys in SOS Children's Villages. SOS Children's Villages announced this last week. Each of the affected persons received 25,000 euros in compensation. That is the maximum sum that SOS Children's Villages pays out. The child protection organization had known since 2013 but remained silent for twelve years — and continued to solicit donations with Gmeiner.

For SOS Children's Villages, the latest revelations are the greatest turning point in the organization's history. Donations are collapsing, trust is gone — internally as well. The chairman of the umbrella organization SOS Children's Villages International called the years-long cover-up by his colleagues in Austria a "disgrace" and expelled the founding nation from the Children's Village community.

SOS Children's Villages would probably still be silent today had Falter not uncovered the abuses in the Children's Villages Moosburg (Carinthia) and Imst at the beginning of September: psychological and physical inappropriate treatment of children, carried out by the people who were supposed to protect them — caregivers, educators, substitute mothers, village directors.

Management promised improvement and responded with a reform commission to the Falter investigations. Under the leadership of Irmgard Griss, former President of the Supreme Court and former Neos politician, the body is now examining the entire SOS Children's Villages apparatus. That Hermann Gmeiner's inappropriate treatment is finally being openly discussed is the first working result of the commission.

But while Austria is shocked by Hermann Gmeiner's deep fall from child protector to person with inappropriate behavior toward children, the next abyss opens up.

It affects precisely the second great shining figure of the organization: Helmut Kutin. Gmeiner's close friend was one of the first Children's Village children. After Gmeiner's death, he became president of SOS Children's Villages International and SOS Children's Villages Austria. Kutin died in 2024, honorary president of SOS Children's Villages until the end, at the age of 82. Now documents leaked to Falter incriminate him heavily.

Kutin knowingly allowed an alleged major donor with inappropriate interest in minors to have access to boys in Children's Villages. There, as we now know, he subjected them to inappropriate treatment. Managing director Christian Moser, in office since 2008 and suspended from duty because of the abuses in Imst and Moosburg, also knew about the inappropriate treatment. This is proven by emails, letters, internal audit and quarterly reports, and a statement of facts.

"Three nights in the training camp are confirmed," an email from 2017 states, for example. Behind the innocuously sounding sentence hides a perfidious system of inappropriate treatment. For the nights in an SOS training camp in Nepal, where Children's Village children were staying, Kutin confirmed for an old acquaintance: Funcke-Bonnet, wealthy scion of a brewing dynasty, resident in the Lower Austrian community of Aschbach-Markt, at the time 87 years old, died in August 2022, major donor to SOS Children's Villages.

Kutin must have suspected what could happen in Nepal. He demonstrably knew — internal documents prove it — about the man's inappropriate inclination and that he acted it out on Children's Village children. Already two years earlier, SOS Children's Villages Nepal had imposed a ban on Funcke-Bonnet's visits. The reason: the man had forced a boy to oral physical intimacy, kissed two children, and coerced five others to show him their intimate areas, as later became known. In Austria, as early as 2014, Funcke-Bonnet grabbed Children's Village children in the crotch, patted their bottoms, wanted to be alone with them.

All of this is documented in the files. The bosses in Austria had, according to an internal report, "since at least 2015" knowledge of allegations of inappropriate conduct against Funcke-Bonnet. They knew that boundary violations kept occurring. "Kutin knows," as an internal email from 2014 states.

Nevertheless, Kutin and Moser did not keep the man away from children. Christmas and birthday cards were exchanged; Kutin is said to have visited Funcke-Bonnet at home; in February 2013 he wished him "with all my heart that you can finally endure your difficult childhood and youth through the visits to Nepal." The person with inappropriate behavior toward children was courted by the child protection organization.

After all, he had donated money to the organization for many years — in 2010, even 900,000 euros directly to SOS Children's Villages Nepal. In return, Funcke-Bonnet pushed for contact with boys. And SOS Children's Villages gave it to him. The amounts of money were more important than the children's welfare.

The internal documents prove: Kutin maintained the best contact with the man and personally took care of his concerns. In 2003, the SOS Children's Villages president was informed by fax that Funcke-Bonnet was presumably in Nepal. In 2005, the first documented visit to a Nepalese Children's Village took place. Funcke-Bonnet himself mentioned the trip in a Christmas letter to SOS Children's Villages. Subsequently, he stayed there repeatedly, often for months at a time.

At the opening ceremony of the Lumbini Children's Village in 2010, Funcke-Bonnet sat directly next to Christian Moser. In an internal message, SOS Children's Villages president Kutin describes the celebration: "On the occasion of the opening of the SOS Children's Villages Lumbini, we placed Mr. Funcke-Bonnet especially in the spotlight, and he 'blossomed' and was very happy about the recognition of his magnificent donation."

Funcke-Bonnet slept in the Children's Villages, as can be seen from an email exchange from 2010 with the national director of SOS Children's Villages Nepal. Helmut Kutin also "demonstrably" knew about this, as an internal statement of facts from February 2023 documents. But no one intervened.

Donors are forbidden from staying overnight in the villages and being alone with the children. SOS Children's Villages's own "Sponsorship Manuals" establish this. The rules are supposed to protect the children. In Funcke-Bonnet's case, they did not.

Around 2013, SOS Children's Villages even flew a Nepalese boy to Austria for Mr. Funcke-Bonnet. In a letter to an SOS employee, Funcke-Bonnet asked to invite the Nepalese young person, 17 years old, to Austria for three weeks. The SOS employee, then in the team of today's managing director Nora Deinhammer and responsible for major donor care, did not hesitate long. The young person was to spend the first night after his arrival in the SOS Children's Villages Hinterbrühl in Lower Austria. After that, he slept in the major donor's house in Aschbach-Markt.

The neighbors remember that "Mr. Funcke-Bonnet" liked to surround himself with children. "His inclination was known," says a woman. Funcke-Bonnet is said to have given children chocolate and coloring books and taken them swimming at the lake. He repeatedly invited especially boys into his house. "I forbade my son from going there," says an older neighbor.

They also remember the boy from Nepal. Funcke-Bonnet claimed that as a godfather, he was allowed to bring Children's Village children into his house. Whether inappropriate treatment occurred cannot be proven.

A year later, a Children's Village mother documented the major donor's transgressions for the first time. In summer 2014, Funcke-Bonnet invited children from the SOS Children's Villages Altmünster (Upper Austria) to a farm in Aschbach-Markt. The Children's Village mother present described the outing to an SOS employee by email. Funcke-Bonnet had "patted" a boy, eight years old, on the bottom with his right hand and "touched him in the crotch" with his left hand. He promised the children that they could stay overnight with him next summer, "alone without a caregiver."

SOS Children's Villages's responsible parties reacted hesitantly to the educator's report. They neither reported Funcke-Bonnet nor informed the responsible authorities. And they did not ban Funcke-Bonnet from visiting Children's Villages either. The only consequence for the millionaire: "There is no physical contact with the children beyond a handshake," as an internal statement of facts reads. The Children's Village bosses did not want to fall out with a major donor.

Not even when SOS Children's Villages Nepal imposed a ban on Funcke-Bonnet's visits in 2015. The children had reported "incidents" with the major donor. What had happened, SOS Children's Villages Austria did not want to know exactly. They were satisfied with this terse response from Nepal: "We don't speak about it."

Instead of finally involving the authorities, SOS Children's Villages continued to court the man. For the major donor threatened to "withdraw his funds from SOS" and "spill the beans." According to internal documents, Helmut Kutin was supposed to prevent this. He is said to have visited Funcke-Bonnet and spoken with him.

SOS Children's Villages remained in contact with Funcke-Bonnet until 2020. It was only seven years after the transgressions against the boy from the SOS Children's Villages Altmünster and six years after the ban in Nepal that the organization reacted under enormous external pressure. A whistleblower in Nepal reported the inappropriate conduct involving eight children by Funcke-Bonnet. SOS Children's Villages International reported the case to the Austrian authorities on December 1, 2021.

The colleagues in Austria continued to be reluctant. A week later, on December 9, 2021, SOS Children's Villages Austria finally submitted a statement of facts to the public prosecutor's office. Why the organization reacted so late, it does not say to Falter.

In summer 2022, the criminal police rang at Funcke-Bonnet's door in Aschbach-Markt. "But he wasn't there," says Mayor Martin Schloglhofer, who was present during the house search. The accused was in the hospital; a few days later, he died at the age of 93.

The major donor case was "delayed from the start," an independent expert commission commissioned by SOS Children's Villages International later found. It is "concerning" that the organization may have "impeded proper execution and completion of the proceedings" through its behavior. This criticism was never publicly discussed.

SOS Children's Villages only went public with the allegations against Funcke-Bonnet after his death. Several media outlets reported on a mysterious donor suspected of having subjected children to inappropriate treatment. They said they now wanted to investigate what responsibility Austria bears. A commission commissioned in 2021 under the leadership of former governor Waltraud Klasnic came to the conclusion that SOS Children's Villages leaders had known about the inappropriate treatment of children since 2015. SOS Children's Villages celebrated itself for its supposed transparency. Even today, the organization considers the case as "comprehensively investigated."

The watered-down Klasnic report named no names. The leaked documents show: it was about Christian Moser and Helmut Kutin. They covered up the case.

Last year, Kutin died in a Children's Village in Thailand. According to Children's Village legend, it was Gmeiner who brought about the turning point in the Children's Village boy's life. After conversations with his mentor, Kutin decided in 1967 to go to Vietnam and build the then largest Children's Village in the world in Ho Chi Minh City. Under Kutin's presidency, SOS Children's Villages was to expand across the entire globe. The motto: "A loving home for every child."

Now the myth is falling. Many people feel deceived. Gmeiner and Kutin did not protect the children. One is alleged to have subjected them to inappropriate treatment, the other to have delivered them to a person with inappropriate behavior toward children — for the money of an old, rich man.