I have just returned from a few days in Belgium where I have been reporting on the issue of child sex abuse within the Catholic church. And much as we enjoyed seeing the glory of medieval Bruges and Antwerp and eating mussels in Brussels, my producer and I are heartily relieved that this particular trip is over.
Last Friday saw the release of a Church commission’s report into decades of abuse by church members. The findings were relayed to me by the child psychiatrist in charge of the inquiry. They are based on almost 500 letters and phone calls from victims, and they do not make happy reading.
Up to 350 priests were thought to be involved. 91 of them are still alive. At least 13 of their victims committed suicide. 24 of the victims were 7 years old or younger. The youngest was just a 2 year-old toddler. Most of the abuse occurred in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Fifty per cent of the perpetrators are thought to be dead.
The most notorious paedophile priest is Roger Vangheluwe, the 73 year-old former Bishop of Bruges, who in April admitted abusing his nephew from the age of 5 until the age of 18. His Excellency Bishop Roger was eventually forced to resign, though he cannot be prosecuted under Belgian law because his crime was committed over a decade ago.
“That is our first recommendation for what should be changed,” I was told by Professor Peter Adriaenssens, the head of the church enquiry and probably the most eminent child psychiatrist in Belgium. How many priests had gone to jail then, I asked him?
“I would say none”, the Professor said simply. “Some went to court, but the attitude was very permissive. There was a collective lack of seriousness.”
Professor Adriaenssens is strangely grateful to the disgraced ex-Bishop, because the huge publicity generated by his resignation has prompted the floodgates to open.
“We had 33 testimonies in the past ten years, so we were convinced we were good,” he said. “Then suddenly there was this shock. Hundreds of people, mostly men, started talking for the first time about how they were sexually abused.”
Viewers on Sunday night will have seen one of those victims, San Deurinck, speak out on Channel 4 News. It was an act of enormous courage. He began our interview by telling me that he would talk in the most clinical way possible about how he had been abused from the age off 11. It was important for him to appear strong, he said, so that others would feel strong enough to come forward with their stories too.
San did break down, perhaps inevitably but only briefly. I have transcribed his interview here because his testimony was so powerful and so moving.
Was there any procedure within the Church for tackling abuse, I asked Professor Adriaenssens. “Not really”, he said. “Bishops were free to do what they want.”
It was Adriaenssens himself who got on the phone to the Bishop of Bruges in April and told him he had to resign. Incredibly, the Cardinal who for a long time headed the Belgian Church – one Godfried Danneels – did not order the offending Bishop to quit, but merely asked him to. And this feeble act was only after the Cardinal had first tried begging the victim not to go public or drag the Bishop’s “name through the mud”.
“The Bishop will resign next year, so it actually would be better for you to wait”, the Cardinal said. “I don’t think you would do yourself or him a favour by shouting this from the rooftops.” And we know he said this for a fact because the victim had the good sense to tape record the entire conversation.
The Cardinal now regrets what he said and is described by his spokesman as a broken man. The spokesman, Toon Osaers, told me the Cardinal had been driving his car when he first heard about the Bishop’s misdeeds, and this threw his concentration. Going to the police was apparently not an option.
Now that the depth and scale of this scandal is well and truly out in the open, one can only hope that the Catholic Church in Belgium has no choice but to mend its ways.
“There was a culture of secrecy”, Professor Adriaenssens told me. “Many people in this church now expect it to change. We need Bishops who have a certain courage. ”
Victims like San Deurinck believe the church culture of secrecy is endemic and beyond repair. Whatever the truth, regular church attendance is already below ten per cent in Belgium, and surely falling after 6 months of damning revelations.
And even the Professor in charge of the Church enquiry has seen his faith shaken.
“Are you a Catholic?” I asked him.
“Yes”, he replied. “Though of course if you have to listen to hundreds of trauma stories of what happened in the Church, you doubt what your beliefs are.”