Catholic bishops brushed aside complaints related to paedophilia and sexual abuse against 87 priests, according to a charity specialized in human rights abuse in the Church. De Standaard, a leading Dutch-language Belgian newspaper, reports that a charity, Mensenrechten in de Kerk (Human Rights in the Church), received paedophilia and sexual abuse related complaints against 87 priests, brothers and fathers, of whom 81 were Flemish and 6 were Francophone, in the late '90s.
The charity had informed the Belgian bishops in June 1998 in a registered letter.
Belgium was under the spell of sexual abuser Marc Dutroux at the time.
The country was on edge and people were extremely sensitive and alert with respect to child abuse, even overly so. Any complaint was taken extremely seriously.
Yet, the bishops did not react particularly "sharply" to the remarkable numbers and affirmative conclusions of the letter.
They also didn't react forcefully to the complaints the authors of the letter had sent to all dioceses concerned. Someone from De Morgen, another Dutch-language Belgian newspaper, was able to examine the files, read the witness reports of the rape victims and the admissions of guilt of the clergymen.
"Our registered letter got an empty reply," say ex-members of the charity. "Yet, we were so happy that we had been able to bring together a large number of complaints and to provide a clear analysis. This was hard to deny."
The human rights charity did not only report sexual abuse in its letter. It also mentioned 220 other reports of abuse of power within the Roman Catholic Church.
Now, twelve years after the letter has been sent, the reaction of the spokesmen for the bishops is evasive: "forgotten", "long ago", "we don't know anything about this".
SIC: DJ