SALON

Thursday, Jan 12, 2012 5:27 PM UTC

Belgian Church Wants Abusers To Pay Victims

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Belgian Church Wants Abusers To Pay VictimsBelgian bishop Guy Harpigny gestures during a media conference in Brussels, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. The Belgian church wants priests and clergy who abused children to pay damages in case the victim seek compensation beyond the date that the case can be brought to court. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)(Credit: AP)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium’s Catholic Church announced Thursday that priests and clergy who abused children will be required to pay damages, even when victims make their claims after the country’s statute of limitations has expired.

The church — in an overall response on how to deal with the abuse scandals that have enveloped it — urged victims to initially take their cases to civil authorities.

But it also said it was willing to impose penalties ranging from apologies to financial compensation, both for recent cases and for those so old they can no longer be brought to court. Over the past two years, more than 500 witnesses have come forward with accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy in Belgium, spanning several decades.

“If the culprit is still alive, he will certainly have to pay,” Bishop Guy Harpigny said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The culprits “may say civil authorities have told them the statute of limitations has expired, but we will say ‘you have to pay,’” Harpigny said. “They have committed evil. They are responsible and we will try to make them pay.”

He added that if individual priests were unable to pay, the church itself would compensate. The Belgian church, however, has not offered any figures regarding potential compensation.

The Vatican is the sole decider of whether to defrock priests.

In Belgian cases, however, Harpigny said in all instances of reports of serious pedophile cases being sent to Rome, the Vatican left the decision of leaving the priesthood to the pedophile priests themselves. So the options of the Belgian church have been limited.

If the guilty “no longer want to be priests, then we will say yes. (But) the priest has to ask’,” he said of the Vatican’s response.

For years, victims organizations have complained that church hierarchy had ignored their pleas and protected abusive priests by moving them from parish to parish instead of punishing them.

Prof. Manu Keirse, who helped the church write “Toward an overall approach of sexual abuse in the Church” in close cooperation with the bishops, said it was “not a good attitude to let everything depend on the priest.”

The Vatican was far too aloof and “infinitely slow,” he told the AP, moments after presenting the Belgian policy text with Harpigny.

“Do I really trust the policies of Rome?” Keirse asked. “No, in fact, I don’t. I have more trust in the intentions of the Belgian church.”

The Vatican has long been accused by abuse victims and bishops themselves of dragging its feet when it comes to dealing with pedophile priests: American bishops in the 1980s begged the Vatican to let them laicize pedophiles without cumbersome and time-consuming church trials, but Rome refused.

Irish bishops in the 1990s proposed reporting molester priests to police but the Vatican came back with a warning that doing so posed serious canonical problems.

Belgium’s abuse scandal broke two years ago when former bishop Roger Vangheluwe admitted to the sexual abuse of two nephews, including 13 years of abuse of one which started at age 5.

Vangheluwe said last year he had fully realized what he did was wrong, and often went to confession about it. The 75-year-old Vangheluwe resigned in 2010, just as the sex abuse scandal was spreading across Europe.

____________

Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this story

More Raf Casert.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
3104 points3105 points | 2634 comments
vote
Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now?: With GOP-backed cuts to forecasting agency, experts warn future storms will go undetected and more lives lost
1104 points1105 points | 587 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator wants to offset tornado aid with other cuts
155 points156 points | 61 comments
vote
New campaign compares gun control to anti-LGBT discrimination
30 points31 points | 11 comments
vote
Horrifying new trend: Posting rapes to Facebook " In Chicago this weekend, prosecutors announced three teenaged boys will tried as adults for aggravated criminal sexual assault after allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl — and posting a video of the attack on Facebook."
33 points34 points | 15 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations