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	Belgian Raiders Went to National Archives By Stephen Castle New York Times June 30, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/europe/01belgium.html?_r=1 BRUSSELS — Police officers who raided the Roman Catholic Church here last week in an inquiry into sexual abuse also took documents from the National Archives, that body disclosed Wednesday. “As far as we know, it is the first time in the history of the Belgian National Archives that records that are kept here are seized by the judicial authorities,” the archives said in a statement. During the raids last Thursday, a group of bishops was held for more than nine hours and the tomb of a cardinal was disturbed in a hunt for documents. That prompted condemnation from Pope Benedict XVI, who described the police action as “surprising and deplorable.” On Monday the head of a commission set up to help victims, Peter Adriaenssens, resigned along with its other members, because the police also raided its offices and took hundreds of documents on the 475 cases it was investigating. The documents lodged with the National Archives relate to around 30 allegations of sexual abuse brought to the same commission under its previous head, Godelieve Halsberghe. The archives said about 30 files were entrusted to it in September 2009 “but were — as was the case for those of the Adriaenssens commission — seized by the investigating judicial authorities.” “We do not know when the records will return here but we fear it might not be for many years,” the archives said. Ms. Halsberghe, a retired magistrate, said she placed her documents with the National Archives in 2009 after receiving an anonymous phone call warning her to be careful about their safekeeping. The commission was established with the support of the church in 2000 with the intention of aiding victims of sexual abuse by priests. In all, Ms. Halsberghe and her colleagues investigated 33 cases and sought financial compensation for victims, about half of whom won some financial settlement. But she quit her position in 2008 because she said she was not getting sufficient cooperation from the church. The seizure of the documents is highly sensitive because many of those who came forward did so having taken a conscious decision to seek redress through the commission rather than going to the police. In recent weeks, the issue of child sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium has risen to the top of the agenda because of the resignation in April of Roger Vangheluwe, the popular and long-serving bishop of Bruges, who admitted that he had molested a boy while still a priest. With the publicity surrounding the resignation of Bishop Vangheluwe, Mr. Adriaenssens’s commission was flooded with new complaints. On Wednesday, the Web site of Knack, a Belgian magazine, quoted a former member of the Adriaenssens commission, Karlijn Demasure, as saying that documents had been seized from his home, too. He warned that some of the victims were scared that their stories would be made public. “I myself am convinced that there is certainly more than 5,000 victims of sexual abuse by clergy in Belgium,” he was quoted as saying by Knack.
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