By Bridgette P. Lavictoire
Lez Get Real
December 17, 2011
http://lezgetreal.com/2011/12/up-to-20000-victims-in-dutch-catholic-abuse-scandal/
 |
| Coat of Arms of Vatican City |
Problems continue for the Roman Catholic Church when it comes to the sex abuse scandal. In the Netherlands, an independent commission was given the task of investigating incidents that ranged from touching to rape within the Dutch Church between 1945 and 2010 by two of the Church's organizations. Wim Deetman, the chairman of the investigating committee, stated that there were a large number of victims.
According to Deetman "The number of children under the age of 18 that were sexually abused while spending part of their lives in a catholic orphanage or boarding school in the Netherlands is between 10,000-20,000."
The findings of the commission also went into how the authorities covered-up the abuse, and caused the Dutch Church to offer an apology for how it handled this. Bishop Wim Eijk stated that "The offenders are not the the only ones to blame. The authorities are also at fault. They didn't act properly. They didn't take care of the victims or give priority to the victims' interests."
The number of cases possible in the Netherlands would put it far ahead of the number of cases in Ireland, Germany or the United States.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.