NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands
A Roman Catholic brother administered a deadly overdose of medication to 37 severely handicapped boys at a home for the disabled in the Netherlands 60 years ago, the Dutch public prosecution office has confirmed. On the heels of a castration scandal in the church this spring, a deeply macabre cold case has been solved.
Murder, manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter. Thirty-seven counts. Those are the charges that would have been brought against Brother Andreas if he were still alive and if the statue of limitations had not expired.
The public prosecutor in the Dutch city of Roermond reports that Andreas, who belonged to a congregation called the Brothers of the Holy Joseph, put the permanently bedridden boys to death one by one, shortly after they arrived at the home between 1952 and 1954.
No regrets
The public prosecutor’s report, released this morning finally clarifies a sharp spike in deaths during that period at the Saint Joseph’s home in the tiny southern hamlet of Heel.
Brother Andreas himself wrote in his memoirs that he had acted with the permission of his brother superior at Saint Joseph’s, and in his writings he never expressed any regrets, according to the prosecutor’s report.
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