Catholic Church Reportedly Castrated Boys Who Reported Priest Sex Abuse

The Americablog
March 19, 2012

http://www.americablog.com/2012/03/catholic-church-reportedly-castrated.html

Just when you think the Catholic church abuse stories couldn't get any worse, something else is reported. Like castrating a young boy for having the temerity to report that his priest abused him. In this case, a politician even participated in the coverup according to the report. DutchNews:

At least one boy under the age of 16 was castrated to 'help' his homosexual feelings while in Catholic church care in the 1950s, the NRC reported on Saturday.

But there are indications at least 10 other boys were also castrated, the paper said. The claims were not included in the Deetman report on sexual abuse within the Catholic church published at the end of last year.
The paper says the one confirmed case concerned a boy - Henk Heithuis - who reported being sexually abused by priests to the police in 1956. After giving evidence, he was placed in a Catholic-run psychiatric institution where he was then castrated because of his 'homosexual behaviour'.

Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.

The group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in the litigation. But the group has been subpoenaed five times in recent months in Kansas City and St. Louis, and its national director, David Clohessy, was questioned by a battery of lawyers for more than six hours this year. A judge in Kansas City ruled that the network must comply because it "almost certainly" had information relevant to the case.

The network and its allies say the legal action is part of a campaign by the church to cripple an organization that has been the most visible defender of victims, and a relentless adversary, for more than two decades. "If there is one group that the higher-ups, the bishops, would like to see silenced," said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University and an advocate for victims of clergy sex crimes, "it definitely would be SNAP. And that's what they're going after. They're trying to find a way to silence SNAP."