A Belgian priest has confessed to a child sex-abuse accusation that
came to light during a campaign to nominate him for the Nobel Peace
Prize for his work fighting globalization's impact on developing
countries.
The confession was published in a Belgian newspaper
Wednesday and confirmed by the organization the priest founded,
deepening a sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in the
country.
After a spate of accusations this year, the church in
September published the harrowing accounts of more than 100 victims of
clerical sex abuse, some as young as 2 when they were assaulted.
In
October, after supporters of 85-year-old Francois Houtart began working
to nominate him for the Nobel, a woman contacted the nonprofit
organization he founded and said the priest had abused her brother 40
years ago, according to its director, Bernard Duterme.
Houtart
resigned the next month from the board of Cetri, which publishes reports
critical of developed nations' actions in the Third World, Duterme
said.
Houtart told the newspaper Le Soir that he twice touched
"the intimate parts" of his cousin, an incident he called "inconsiderate
and irresponsible."
In her e-mail to Cetri and the committee to
nominate Houtart for the Nobel Prize, the victim's sister also pointed
to her testimony in the church's report, Duterme said.
There, she details the abuse of her brother, which she describes as "rape," by an unnamed priest.
She
says the priest, who was a friend of her father, entered her brother's
room twice "to rape him."
''Before the third time, my brother went to
tell his parents, who kept him in their room," she is quoted as saying
in the report.
The priest isn't named in the report.
Houtart
is in Ecuador and didn't immediately respond to phone calls and e-mail
Wednesday, but he told Le Soir that he entered the boy's room, when he
was staying with the boy's parents close to Liege, in eastern Belgium.
"Walking
through the room of one of the family's boys, I effectively touched his
intimate parts twice, which woke him up and frightened him," Houtart is
quoted as saying.
The committee in November ended its campaign to
nominate Houtart for the 2011 Nobel Prize, saying the priest had
requested its termination because "his age and his personal projects
would not allow him to fully assume the role requested in such
circumstances."
In a statement, the committee said "thousands of
people" in 74 countries had participated in the signature campaign,
recognizing Houtart's role in the social justice and antiglobalization
movement.
It has been a traumatic year for the Catholic Church in
Belgium, beginning in April with the resignation of the Bishop of Bruges
Roger Vangheluwe.
Vangheluwe admitted to having sexually abused a
nephew for years when he was a priest and a bishop.
In June,
authorities seized hundreds of case files from a church and used power
tools to open a prelate's crypt in Mechlin's St. Rumbold Cathedral,
seeking evidence.
The raid was condemned by the Vatican and later ruled
excessive by a Belgian court.
However, the investigation into the
abuse continued and in September the Catholic Church published an almost
200-page report detailing the testimonies of 124 victims of abuse by
Catholic clergy over decades.
In the church's report, the victim's
sister says her father went to talk to the priest about the incident a
few days later and asked him to apologize, but the priest declined and
"told my father that there wasn't anything more normal."
Her father then
cut off all contact with Houtart, the woman says.
In his letter
to Le Soir, Houtart says he was "personally perturbed" by the incident,
"since I was conscious of the contradiction it represented with my
Christian faith and my function as a priest."
He says the boy's
parents suggested he get in touch with a professor in Liege, who advised
him to stay in the priesthood and concentrate on his work.
Francois
Polet, a researcher at Cetri, said the organization decided not to go
public with the reason for Houtart's resignation from the board at the
victim's sister's request.
He said the precise relationship between
Houtart and the victim — whether he was a cousin, nephew, or more
distant relative — wasn't clear.
"It was a big, big surprise and a
big, big (disappointment)," Polet said of the revelation.
"Directly for
us it was very clear that we could not continue to have some kind of
collaboration" with Houtart.
SIC: AP/INT'L