The Roman Catholic Church, battered by sexual abuse scandals from the United States to Belgium, is facing a new set of allegations now in the Netherlands.
Figures released Thursday by an investigative commission showed that
almost 2,000 people have made complaints of sexual or physical abuse
against the church, in a country with only 4 million Catholics.
“The Roman Catholic church has not faced a crisis like this since the
French Revolution,” said Peter Nissen, professor of the history of
religion at Radboud University, of the growing abuse scandal.
With one legal case starting this week, and accusations against two
former bishops, the reaction of the church appears to have fueled the
crisis.
Nearly all of the cases are decades old, with probably no more
than 10 from the last 20 years.
Asked in March on TV about the hundreds of complaints already surfacing
then, one of its most senior figures, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, shocked
the nation by replying not in Dutch but in German.
“Wir haben es nicht gewusst” — we knew nothing — he said, using a
phrase associated with Nazis excuses after the Second World War - a
parallel that has reverberated around the Netherlands.
“A lot of people perceived it as an affirmation of the culture of
covering up cases,” said Professor Nissen, adding that, because of its
association with the Nazis, it meant to many “’we should have known’ or
‘we knew but we didn’t want to know.’”
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said he had no
comment, saying that the matter was in the hands of Dutch bishops.
Next month Cardinal Simonis, the retired bishop of Utrecht but for 38
years a prominent public face of Roman Catholicism in the Netherlands,
will make legal history by testifying as a witness in a court hearing
involving sexual abuse which started Tuesday in Middelburg.
In an interim report, issued Thursday, a commission headed by Wim
Deetman, a Protestant former education minister, said it had received a
total of roughly 1,975 reports of sexual, or physical abuse, some
directly but others through a body set up to cater for victims called
Hulp en Recht or Help and Justice.
The document recommends that bishops accept responsibility “for the
suffering caused to many people by sexual abuse” and should not rely on
the statute of limitations to avoid making compensation.
In neighboring Belgium the resignation earlier this year of the former Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who later admitted abusing his nephew, convulsed the church and prompted hundreds of victims to come forward.
One central allegation in the Netherlands is that, as in other countries
including the United States, known abusers were simply transferred to
new parishes.
In recent weeks it emerged that a Roman Catholic order, the Salesians of
Don Bosco, paid 16,000 euros, about $22,000, to the alleged victim of
one bishop, Jan ter Schure, who died in 2003.
The abuse is said to have
taken place at the Don Rua monastery in Ugchelen between 1948 and 1953.
The order declined to comment.
Meanwhile Hulp en Recht is examining claims against a former Roman
Catholic bishop, Jo Gijsen, now aged 78, who has been accused of having
an abusive relationship with a pupil at the Rolduc seminary between 1959
and 1961.
The ex-pupil claims that the ex-bishop would watch him masturbating at
night in a dormitory, and the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad also
reported that an unnamed former pupil had told them that Mr. Gijsen used
to get into bed with pupils.
Both allegations have been denied by the
former bishop.
Under pressure from the growing public backlash, the church has set up
another committee, chaired by Professor Siewert Lendenbergh of Erasmus
University, Rotterdam, to investigate the legal aspects of compensation
for claimants.
Central to the growing public debate over the church’s culpability is
the extent to which sexual abuse was tolerated and covered-up.
In a recently-published book entitled “Pious Sinners,” Joep Dohmen,
argues that, instead of dealing with allegations of pedophilia, there
was a policy of moving known abusers around the Netherlands, often
exiling them to small, rural communities.
"Cardinal Simonis and other Dutch bishops swept abuse cases under the
carpet,” said Mr. Dohmen “They transferred offending priests, and
provided little care to victims. Cardinal Simonis did this as did Cardinal Bernardus Alfrink, Bishop
Frans Wiertz, and Bishop Jo Gijsen. “Members of congregations and
religious orders such as the Jesuits and the Salesians did the same."
This theory is being tested in the pre-trial hearing in which Cardinal
Simonis will testify and which began this week in Middelburg.
It
involves an 88-year-old priest who was convicted of abusing three
youngsters while serving as a priest in Ter Nauzen near Middelburg in
Zeeland.
He had been arrested, though not prosecuted, on similar grounds in the
late 1970s when he
was director of a Catholic youth center near The
Hague. At the time Cardinal Simonis was bishop of Rotterdam, the diocese
of which covers The Hague.
The alleged victim’s lawyer, Martin De Witte, who represents around 120
other people claiming abuse, said his client wants an apology and
damages. He said the hearing aims to put pressure on the Church.
“We chose this case because it’s a relatively young victim,” he said,
“and a situation where we say the Catholic Church didn’t take the
measures to protect children from this man. They gave him another
chance, and another, and another.”
Pieter Kohnen, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in the
Netherlands, said that, under its rules, the diocesan bishop does not
have responsibility for institutions run by Catholic orders.
Mr. Kohnen argued that cases of sexual abuse now coming to light took
place predominantly before 1970 and were mainly concentrated in the
religious orders that controlled many boarding schools and boys’ clubs
in those years.
“The official figures of Hulp & Recht,” he said, “show that, of the 1799 cases notified to Hulp en Recht since March of this year, less than
10 took place between 1990-2010. Of the 1799 cases 265 relate to clergy
in one of the seven dioceses and around 1,500 are related to members of
religious orders and congregations, mostly male members.”
Mr. Kohnen rejected the accusation that perpetrators of sex crimes were simply moved around the country.
“ The general allegation is extremely general and not in conformity with
the facts,” he said, “people were replaced but not without therapy or
proper help – what was felt necessary in the circumstances. There are
also examples were they were given work without contact with children.”
According to Professor Nissen, the expert in religious history, the
church’s argument that it has little authority over religious orders is
correct, but he thinks this is a narrow position to take.
“They take a legal, canonical, approach but you could take a pastoral
approach and say that bishops are leaders of the Catholic community, and
that religious orders, while having autonomy, are part of this
community,” Professor Nissen said.
Nor does it satisfy Mr. De Witte, the lawyer representing victims.
“The Catholic Church,” he said, “exported the problem. They should have known something was wrong.”
“We want to know what they knew, who made the decision, did they talk
about sexual abuse? These are some of the questions we want answered by
Cardinal Simonis.”
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