Belgian magistrates have re-launched a high-profile probe into child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, this time seeking to show the Church hierarchy engaged in a cover-up.
Federal police pounced yesterday on “personal files” held by senior Church figures in the dioceses of Liege, Namur and Tournai after hitting Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Hasselt and Mechelen since Monday.
The seizures are based on testimony from some 200 alleged victims and in 87 judicial complaints.
Federal magistrate and spokesman for national prosecutors Lieve Pellens said the purpose of this new “key phase” in a Belgian investigation is different from that of dramatic June 2010 raids on Church headquarters that angered Pope Benedict XVI.
Truckloads of evidence gathered then has been ruled inadmissible by Belgian courts following Church challenges over police methods, but now magistrate Wim De Troy is focusing on a search for proof of “culpable negligence” by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
After similar scandals in the United States, Ireland and Germany, Belgium was rocked in April 2010 with revelations that the then bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, had abused a nephew for 13 years.
Forced to resign over the scandal, he was subsequently placed in seclusion in a French abbey but vanished from view last year after rendering the Vatican “stupefied” when he went on television to announce he had also abused a second family member.
According to Dutch-language daily De Standaard, magistrates are focused on Mr Vangheluwe’s case.
He cannot be charged with abuse because the acts he has admitted to carrying out on his nephews go too far back under Belgian prosecution law.
However, the newspaper has reported that until recently Mr Vangheluwe protected priests in his diocese from similar allegations, sending money to one victim and threatening “consequences” if the pay-off came out. In this instance, it was a question of a female allegedly abused from the age of 16.
Mr Vangheluwe’s case opened a floodgate, with a Church-backed report more than a year ago revealing almost 500 cases of alleged abuse of boys, girls and adults in Catholic institutions since the 1950s, including 13 known suicides by victims.
The Belgian Roman Catholic Church sought to turn the page last week by saying new confidential channels for victims would result in all cases of sexual abuse being transferred systematically to judicial authorities.