Belgian Authorities Raid Three Bishops Offices during “operation Chalice”

SNAP Wisconsin
January 16, 2012

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. It is perhaps fitting that on the day in which we in the United States commemorate Dr. King’s birthday, victim/survivors of clergy childhood sexual assault in the nation of Belgium move one step closer toward obtaining some level of justice for the crimes that were inflicted upon them.

The Associated Press reports today that Belgian authorities have raided the offices of three bishops as part of a two year investigation into reports of clerical child sex crimes. The inquiry known as “Operation Chalice” descended today upon the dioceses of Hasselt, Mechelen, and Antwerp. A spokesperson for the Belgian Catholic Church insisted that the church had cooperated with authorities and had turned over the documents that were requested. Initial indications are that two dozen files were handed over to Belgian authorities.

It is reported that today’s raids were the result of 200 witness accounts and 87 civil claims. An official with Operation Chalice stated that the investigation focuses on “the non assistance to people in danger and is targeted at people higher up in the hierarchy” and “possibly we will be able to charge people”.

In June of 2010 investigators with Operation Chalice conducted a raid at the Cathedral of St. Rombout in Mechelen. It was there that authorities drilled holes into the crypt of Cardinal Joseph Mercier looking for hidden evidence of child sex crimes. Church records were also seized including two and a half truckloads worth of possible criminal evidence. Pope Benedict XVI responded by calling the raid “surprising and deplorable”.

The AP reports that over the past two years more than 500 people have come forward to report crimes of child sexual assault by Catholic clergy in Belgium.

In 2010 the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe resigned after admitting that as a priest he had sexually assaulted a child, and that those assaults had continued even after he was promoted to bishop. That boy was Vangheluwe’s nephew, and in April of 2011 the former bishop went on television to discuss the sexual crimes he perpetrated on two of his nephews.

Horrified Belgians watched as Vangheluwe described the violation of his nephews as a game. He stated “How did it begin? As with all families. When they came to visit, the nephews slept with me. It began as a game with the boys. It was never a question of rape”. When detailing the 13 years of sexual assault that he inflicted on one of his nephews, beginning when he was five years old, he described it as “a little piece of intimacy”. Not only was it intimate according to Vangheluwe, but he believes that his nephew enjoyed it…”I did not have the feeling that my nephew was against it, quite the contrary. It was not brutal sex”.

Today’s raids were described as the “final phase” of Operation Chalice. An investigator with the operation stated that the next steps would likely occur in the coming months.