DENVER (CO)
Crux
February 4, 2019
By Charles Collins
Allen Hebert was 12-years-old in 1981, when he met Father Adrianus Johannes Willemsen – “Father Andy” – a Dutch priest serving in the Diocese of Austin.
The priest became friends with Hebert’s family, and his parents had no suspicions about the close friendship the cleric was forming with their son.
Soon, the priest began manipulating the adolescent, and told him that he was helping him explore his sexuality as he molested him.
“I never felt intimidated or threatened, rather I was gently led into a very abusive relationship. The relationship continued even after I stopped the physical aspects of it. It was only much later in my life that I recognized my relationship with Father Andy as abusive,” Hebert relates on his website.
Willemsen was one of 22 priests named by the Diocese of Austin on Jan. 31 as having a credible accusation made against him. In all, over 300 clerics and religious have been named by the 15 dioceses in Texas as having been credibly accused of abuse – 14 dioceses released their lists with 286 names on it on Jan. 31; the Diocese of Fort Worth began publishing credibly accused clergy and religious on its website in 2007, and its list currently has 17 names.
Hebert told Crux that he is happy that the list was published, but finds the information on the Austin and Galveston-Houston websites – the two Texas dioceses in which Willemsen served – to be “clinical, hard, [and] cold” due to a lack of details about the assignments of the alleged abusers. He compliments the Archdiocese of San Antonio for being “much more comprehensive,” adding their website “reads like you are speaking with someone who cares and knows that a victim wants to know about their abuser and put their lives back together after having gained some closure to that chapter.”
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