Catholic Church involved in abuse of Dutch children, report says

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2011

Tens of thousands of Dutch children were sexually abused by priests and other Roman Catholic religious figures in the last 65 years, but church officials failed to take adequate action or report problems to police, an independent commission said Friday.

Many of the victims spent part of their childhood in Catholic institutions such as schools and orphanages, where the risk of abuse was twice as high as in the general population, the commission said. But complaints were often ignored or covered up by authorities who were more intent on protecting the church's reputation than providing care for abuse victims.

Friday's long-awaited report adds more fuel to the abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church worldwide, from America to Australia. The Vatican's credibility and standing has been significantly eroded by a stream of allegations that priests molested and assaulted members of their flock, and that bishops and other senior church officials tried to hush up the accusations.

The Dutch commission stopped short of accusing the Catholic Church in the Netherlands as a whole of fostering an institutional "culture of silence." The report said that authority within the Dutch church was fragmented, with each diocese given latitude to deal with problems on its own. There was no centrally organized policy or procedure for dealing with sexual abuse.

Wim Eijk, the archbishop of Utrecht, apologized for what happened in years past and told journalists that the report "fills us with shame and sorrow." The conference of religious orders called the abuse "a dark chapter in the history of religious life" and vowed not to repeat mistakes.

The investigation was launched in August 2010 after allegations of abuse at a Catholic institution in eastern Holland. Those allegations triggered others from around the country of sexual misconduct by Catholic authority figures.

The commission found that tens of thousands of children in the Netherlands were subjected over the years to abuse ranging from unwanted sexual advances to rape. Of these victims, 10,000 to 20,000 lived for some part of their youth in Catholic-run institutions such as reform schools and seminaries during the period from 1945 to '81, after which Catholic homes for children were phased out.

Abusers included priests, members of religious orders and lay workers.

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