Priest Accused of Abusing 2,000 Boys

The Roman Catholic Church is still struggling to cope with the fallout of sex abuse scandals from Germany to the U.S., but it now faces a flood of damaging new allegations from the Netherlands.

According to a report from an independent commission, almost 2,000 Dutch people have reported being sexually and physically abused by priests when they were children -- a huge number for a country with only 4 million Catholics.

The church set up the investigative commission in March after scandals involving pedophile priests surfaced in neighboring Belgium and Germany. The panel published its interim report on Thursday -- its full findings will be released next year -- showing that 1,975 people had come forward over the past year to lodge abuse allegations.

This sudden flurry of accusations means that the Netherlands is ranked second only to Ireland for the number of alleged abuse cases involving the church, Reuters reported.

Almost all of the alleged abuse took place in Dutch Catholic schools and boys' clubs between 1945 and 1990, The New York Times reported. Around 10 cases are believed to relate to events in the past two decades.

"I am very respectful of the people who came forward, because declaring yourself a victim is a big step," said commission head Wim Deetman, a Protestant and former education minister, according to the BBC.

Asked if the report could lead to pressure for a shakeup in the church hierarchy, Deetman replied: "It is too soon to say that. We will see that at the end of next year after discussions with a lot of people. But the bishops' conference has asked us to look at managerial responsibilities."

A central charge made by many alleged abuse victims in the Netherlands, as in other countries, is that the church covered up crimes by moving pedophile priests from parish to parish. That allegation is central to a court hearing that opened Tuesday in the western city of Middelburg. The case involves an 88-year-old priest from the Salesian religious order -- referred to as Father Jan N. -- who in 1990 was convicted of abusing youngsters while working in the town of Terneuzen, 15 miles southeast of Middelburg.

Father Jan N. had previously been arrested, and confessed to, similar charges in the late 1970s, when he was director of a Catholic youth center near The Hague, according to The New York Times. However, he was never charged and was allowed to move to another parish. The bishop of Rotterdam -- whose diocese includes The Hague -- at the time of the first crime, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, is set to testify at the hearing next month.

The alleged victim's lawyer, Martin De Witte -- who is representing some 120 other alleged abuse victims -- told the Times that his now 34-year-old client wants an apology and damages for the trauma he suffered in Terneuzen. De Witte added that the hearing will put pressure on the church to compensate its alleged victims and face its failings.

"We chose this case because it's a relatively young victim," he said, "and a situation where we say the Catholic Church didn't take the measures to protect children from this man. They gave him another chance, and another, and another."

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in the Netherlands told the paper that, under its rules, the diocesan bishop does not have responsibility for institutions run by Catholic orders.

Evidence has also recently emerged that the church in the Netherlands, as in other countries, bought the silence of the abused. Last month it was revealed that the Salesian order secretly paid $22,000 to a victim who was repeatedly sexually abused by seven priests at the Don Rua monastery between 1948 and 1953.

One of those priests, Jan ter Schure, went on to become bishop of Den Bosch. The payment was made six months after his death in 2003. See Chick's ALBERTO.