Sexueller Missbrauch im Umfeld der katholischen Kirche in der Schweiz

Sexual Abuse in the Environment of the Catholic Church in Switzerland

This repository accompanies the paper “Sexueller Missbrauch im Umfeld der katholischen Kirche in der Schweiz: Aufbau einer partizipativen, iterativen und sicheren Forschungsdatenbank”, which is in open peer review at the Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften (ZfdG). It documents the technical framework and methodological approach developed for the ongoing research project at the University of Zurich’s Department of History, which investigates sexual abuse within the Swiss Catholic Church from the mid-20th century to the present (Main Study: 2024–2026).

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📋 Short Description

This repository serves as the Replication Kit and Technical Framework for the historical research project investigating sexual abuse in the Swiss Catholic Church since the mid-20th century.

It contains the data models, schemas, methodologies, and analysis scripts discussed in the associated article. This repository is archived with a permanent DOI on Zenodo.

⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE ON DATA PRIVACY: Due to strict ethical standards, GDPR/DSGVO regulations, and the highly sensitive nature of the source material (containing severe rights violations and medical records), this repository contains NO real personal data. Any datasets provided here are synthetic (dummy data) generated solely to demonstrate the data structure and functionality of the analysis scripts. Real research data is stored securely within the ETH Zürich LeoMed infrastructure.

📁 Repository Structure

The structure of this repository follows the Advanced Structure for Data Analysis of The Turing Way and is organized as follows:

  • data/: data files, including schemas, controlled vocabularies, and MediaWiki templates
    • data/entities/: component-based entity definitions (schemas + templates)
    • data/vocabularies/: controlled vocabularies
    • data/wiki/: general MediaWiki templates
  • analysis/: analysis scripts and documentation
  • meta/: project history and architecture documentation
  • paper/: the research paper currently in open peer review at ZfdG
  • src/: deployment infrastructure and configuration files
    • src/deployment/: deployment documentation and configuration
    • src/maintenance/: maintenance scripts

📊 Data Description

The data in this repository consists of:

  • Data Models and Schemas: Relational database schemas developed for Semantic MediaWiki, including entity relationships for persons, institutions, events, and archival sources

Important Notes:

  • Real research data containing sensitive personal information is stored securely within the ETH Zürich LeoMed infrastructure
  • Data models include field names, descriptions, and controlled vocabularies maintained as part of the repository
  • Code is released under GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0)
  • Documentation and data schemas are released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

🚀 Deployment & Infrastructure

This repository includes comprehensive Infrastructure-as-Code examples and deployment documentation for the MediaWiki-based research database.

Detailed deployment and configuration documentation is available in the src/ directory:

🛠️ Usage

For instructions on user management, database schema updates, and backups, please refer to the Deployment Overview.

🔧 Troubleshooting

Common issues and solutions are documented in the Troubleshooting section.

🔬 Use

These data are openly available to everyone and can be used for any research or educational purpose. If you use this data in your research, please cite as specified in CITATION.cff. The following citation formats are also available through Zenodo:

Zenodo provides an API (REST & OAI-PMH) to access the data. For example, the following command will return the metadata for the most recent version of the data

curl -i https://zenodo.org/api/records/17985875

💬 Support

This project is maintained by @maehr. Please understand that we can’t provide individual support via email. We also believe that help is much more valuable when it’s shared publicly, so more people can benefit from it.

Type Platforms
🚨 Bug Reports GitHub Issue Tracker
📊 Report bad data GitHub Issue Tracker
📚 Docs Issue GitHub Issue Tracker
🎁 Feature Requests GitHub Issue Tracker
🛡 Report a security vulnerability See SECURITY.md
💬 General Questions GitHub Discussions

🗺️ Roadmap

No changes are currently planned.

🤝 Contributing

All contributions to this repository are welcome! If you find errors or problems with the data, or if you want to add new data or features, please open an issue or pull request. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct and the process for submitting pull requests.

🔢 Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning. The available versions are listed in the tags on this repository.

👥 Authors and acknowledgment

See also the list of contributors who contributed to this project.

📜 License

The data in this repository is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License - see the LICENSE-CCBY file for details. By using this data, you agree to give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and to indicate if any modifications have been made.

The code in this repository is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE-AGPL file for details. By using this code, you agree to make any modifications available under the same license.

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