The sex researcher placed boys from youth welfare services in the care of pedophile foster fathers. There they would grow into mature adults, he claimed. A nationwide network supported Helmut Kentler's “experiment”.

vFor many decades, minors from child and youth welfare services have been specifically referred to pedophile men and even convicted pedocriminals for so-called resocialization in Berlin, but also in other places. The “experiment” begun in 1969 by the Berlin social educator, psychologist and sex researcher Helmut Kentler, who headed the Berlin Pedagogical Center from 1967 to 1976, was primarily covered by the West Berlin state youth welfare office, but also by district youth welfare offices.

Kentler claimed to let the boys, whom he assessed as “secondarily mentally weak,” grow into mature adults in the care of pedophile foster fathers. There could be no doubt about his intentions, because the professor of education at the University of Hanover and President of the “German Society for Social Scientific Sexual Research” had unmistakably revealed his intentions in the supposed knowledge “that pederastic conditions can have a very positive effect on a boy’s personality development “when the pederast is a real mentor to the boy”.