New twist in Belgian Catholic abuse legal row

After the Belgian police controversially raided the bishops' offices and Cardinal Daneels' home, confiscating truckloads of material relating to allegations of church sexual abuse, two lower courts ruled that the raid had been inaoppropriate, and ordered that the material would be inadmissable as evidence. However, this is not over yet.  "Expatica" yesterday reported from Belgium that there has been a

New twist in Belgian Catholic abuse legal row

BRUSSELS: Belgium's highest court ordered magistrates on Tuesday to re-examine evidence seized by police relating to decades of child abuse and alleged Roman Catholic Church cover-ups.

The court overturned two previous decisions by lower courts that rendered inadmissible evidence taken from church headquarters, the home of a former archbishop and a church-backed commission investigating sex crimes perpetrated by priests.

Responding to lawyers acting for alleged victims who lodged appeals, the judges said the lower courts were wrong not to hear civil parties and therefore magistrates should look again at the evidence in a new light.

It means that truckloads of material gathered by police in spectacular raids in June that drew the ire of Pope Benedict XVI himself could potentially be used to relaunch state prosecutions for abuse.

However, it does not automatically mean a prosecution case will be launched, because the lower judges could reach the same decisions as before, saying they have done so this time while considering aggrieved parties' accusations.

The raids on June 24, conducted as a Vatican ambassador was meeting with church leaders, opened the eyes of the world to the scale of the scandal within the Belgian Catholic Church, but the church and retired archbishop, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, asked that the material seized be declared out of bounds.

Read more:

After the material was returned, the Church's own investigator completed and delivered a hard-hitting report on the abuse problem. When I reported on his findings, I overlooked one important detail.

Child psychologist Peter Adriaenssens then unleashed nationwide controversy with the release on September 10 of a report by a commission he led which revealed nearly 500 people reported abuses by priests since the 1950s and 13 victims committed suicide.

Adriaenssens subsequently called on the pope to resign.

Related articles

• Belgian Cardinal Attempted to Secure Silence on Abuse (clericalabusewatch.blogspot.com)
• Belgian Bishops Put Money Before Victims (clericalabusewatch.blogspot.com)
• Belgian Cardinal: "Damage Control" Before Concern For Victims (clericalabusewatch.blogspot.com)
• Belgian Abuse Report: "Almost Every Diocese". (clericalabusewatch.blogspot.com)

• Godfried Danneels, Belgian Cardinal, Offered To Keep Sex Abuse Case Quiet Until Bishop's Retirement (huffingtonpost.com)
• Belgian child abuse report exposes Catholic clergy (guardian.co.uk)

A Looming Ecclesiastical Revolution? A Child Abuse Tsunami?

After the flood of revelations over child abuse earlier this year, emerging in country after country to ever greater outrage over abuse, cover-up, and claims of inadequate institutional response, the flow of big, really scandalous news stories has pretty well dried up. There's a limit to just how long the press can continue discussing the precise degree of personal culpability of then Archbishop Ratzinger in Munich, or of Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF- and a limit to how long readers or television viewers will continue to pay any attention.

Sure, there continues to be a steady trickle of local news stories concerning one or other clergyman being accused or coming to trial, and we now have fresh complaints that the newly released revised guidelines don't do enough, and will be ineffective. I don't believe thought that most Catholics will pay enough attention to these details to be seriously bothered. So does this mean that the whole affair will slowly die a death, with bygones allowed to be bygones, and the present dealt with means that while not perfect, will at least ensure that it is never again quite as bad as it was?

Not a bit of it.

A Looming Ecclesiastical Revolution? A Child Abuse Tsunami?

After the flood of revelations over child abuse earlier this year, emerging in country after country to ever greater outrage over abuse, cover-up, and claims of inadequate institutional response, the flow of big, really scandalous news stories has pretty well dried up. There's a limit to just how long the press can continue discussing the precise degree of personal culpability of then Archbishop Ratzinger in Munich, or of Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF- and a limit to how long readers or television viewers will continue to pay any attention.

Sure, there continues to be a steady trickle of local news stories concerning one or other clergyman being accused or coming to trial, and we now have fresh complaints that the newly released revised guidelines don't do enough, and will be ineffective. I don't believe thought that most Catholics will pay enough attention to these details to be seriously bothered. So does this mean that the whole affair will slowly die a death, with bygones allowed to be bygones, and the present dealt with means that while not perfect, will at least ensure that it is never again quite as bad as it was?

Not a bit of it.

Vatican 13 Years Late With UN Child Rights Report

If you want rights, you must accept responsibilities. If the Vatican wants to be taken seriously as a genuine independent state, it must behave like a state. The Vatican claims representation at the UN, a status that brings with it obligations to comply with reporting requirements on a wide range of matters pertinent to global concerns. One one of these, the Vatican has neglected these obligations for thirteen years! Is is a co-incidence that the subject is child rights?

This neglect is not mere oversight. They have had repeated reminders, and officials assured the UN last year that completion of the report was imminent. But still - there is not yet any sign of a report appearing. It may be some small consolation that they are not alone. The only other states that have not yet submitted reports are   St. Kitts and Nevis and five Pacific minnow states - the Cook Islands, Nauru, Niue, Tuvalu and Tonga.

These AP news extracts are via CBS News, where you can read the full report:

Catholic church fights lifting of sex abuse suit limits

The principle behind a statute of limitations is sound – but it falls down hopelessly in cases of child abuse. In all such cases, most victims simply do not report them to anyone, and when they do, their parents often don;t believe them – or choose not to take the matter any further. Although reporting of abuse in the Church has improved, underreporting was particularly high years ago, when the majority of cases now known took place. Many of those victims said nothing until many years later, as adults. To impose a statute of limitations on such cases is effectively to deny the victims any redress, simply because they were children at the time and did not know any better than to keep quiet. Yet the Catholic Church, in Michigan and elsewhere, continues to fight efforts to extend the time frame applicable under the statute of limitations applicable to child abuse.   

From Detroit News:

Lansing -- The abuse David Collins suffered as a teen from a Catholic priest in the archdiocese of Detroit confused him for decades. He spiraled into alcohol abuse. He suffered years of depression and post-traumatic stress. His relationships suffered because he had trouble trusting others. Twenty-six years after the abuse, he's confused again.

The church has paid for extensive counseling for Collins, 40, of Livonia. Officials from the Archdiocese of Detroit have met with him and been apologetic and sympathetic, Collins said. But the church also is lobbying to stop legislation that would allow victims like Collins from suing the church.

"They say one thing to me and say something else (to others) depending on the context," Collins said. "It seems somewhat hypocritical."

Victims of abuse by Catholic clergy are expressing dismay at the strong lobbying the church is doing in Lansing to halt an effort to remove Michigan's statute of limitations on sex abuse cases. In Michigan, victims must file criminal or civil complaints by the time they turn 19 -- what some say is an unrealistic limit on kids who often are traumatized for years by the abuse.

The church maintains that removing the statute of limitations could open the floodgates to abuse cases that are a half-century old and could take money away from programs that benefit the poor. But victims such as Collins see the church's actions as another example of the church protecting itself rather than victims.

Abuse: Is it OK if everybody else is doing it?

An Irish prelate has lashed out at "the media" for making so much fuss about clerical abuse, when so much more abuse occurs elsewhere.

A senior bishop has attacked the media for singling out the Catholic Church for covering-up paedophile priests when 95pc of child abuse occurs in families and community life.

Christopher Jones, the Bishop of Elphin and head of the bishops' committee on the family, said in Maynooth last night that he strongly objected to the way the church was being isolated. "Of course we have made mistakes," Dr Jones added.

"But why this huge isolation of the church and this huge focus on cover-up in the church when it has been going on for centuries?

"It is only now for the first time ever that victims have been given their voice." Dr Jones said that it was known that "95pc of abuse out there is in families, communities and other institutions.

He is right, of course.  There is far more abuse outside the church than in it.  But that completely misses the point.  We do not point to "families" as at fault, because they do not represent a cohesive group, subject to the same  corporate rules and controls as the church.

But let's take Bishop Jones' figures at face value, and consider their implication.  If 95% of abuse takes place outside the chruch, then presumably 5 % is "within" . That implies that 5% of abusers are priests ( or other church staff).  Wikipedia gives the number of secular clergy in Ireland as about 3000, with a further 700 in religious orders.  Call it 4000 for round numbers, or even 5000 in case of undercount. The total population of the country is about five million: one person in a thousand is a priest.  So, 0.1% of the population are responsible for 5%  of the of the abuse.  That equates to a propensity to abuse which is 50 times greater than the general population (or 25 times more if we assume all abusers to be male). That is the point - not the total number of cases, but the incidence, especially in an institution that claims to be a moral guardian, guiding us in right living.