By Hilary White
BRUSSELS, September 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Of the 475 victims of sexual abuse by Belgian clergy, 13 victims committed suicide, according to a report by an independent commission.
On Friday, commission head and child psychiatrist Dr. Peter Adriaenssens issued the report, which showed most of the cases came from the Dutch-speaking sections of the country and occurred largely from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.
The report stated “It is notable how often one issue comes back in the witness reports: the high number of suicides.”
Adriaenssens told media, “The reality is worse than what we present here today because not everyone shares such things automatically in a first contact with the commission.” Many victims, he said, may still not be willing to come forward.
“We saw how priests, called up by the commission and asked to help seek the truth, were willing to set up the list of 10, 15, 20 victims they abused during boarding school while the commission knew only of one.”
At about the same time as the retirement of the powerful former cardinal archbishop of Brussels, Godfried Danneels – and in the wake of the revelations of abuse by his friend and colleague the former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe – the Belgian Church authorities set up the commission under Adriaenssens. Victims were encouraged to come forward with their stories under a promise of anonymity, no matter how much time had passed.
The resulting file of complaints against clergy show a pattern similar to that manifested in other countries. The report says that most of the abuse happened between the 1950s and the 1980s, with a sharp decline starting in 1985. The time coincides with that in which the Catholic Church around the world was entering into the spirit of the sexual revolution and often abandoning its former strictures in seminary formation and clerical discipline.
Two thirds of the victims were boys and were on average 12 years old when the abuse started, but one was only two years old and a few more were under six. Boys were at much higher risk between 10 and 14 years. Sexual abuse happened in all of Belgium’s religious orders, and was often perpetrated in boarding schools.
“We aren’t just talking about touching. We are talking about oral and anal abuse, forced masturbation and mutual masturbation. We talk about people who have gone through serious abuse,” Adriaenssens stated.
The new head of the Belgian Roman Catholic Church, Andre Leonard, said on Monday that the abuse of young people by clergy “should never, never have happened.” Archbishop Leonard told a press conference that the church wished to “draw the lessons from past errors.”
Cardinal Danneels, who was questioned for ten hours in July by state officials who had seized the Church’s files, continues to claim that he knew nothing of the abuse that occurred under his watch as head of the Belgian Church. He said through a spokesman that he is “shocked” at the commission’s findings.
Questions remain, however, of whether Danneels was complicit in a cover-up. In late August, Vangheluwe ‘s victim, who remains unnamed in the media, released to the media audio tapes of interviews in which he was urged by Danneels to remain silent until Vangheluwe’s retirement. Vangheluwe, who resigned in April, has admitted to abusing his own nephew for 25 years.