Belgian Catholic committee on child sex cases dismantled after raid

Jun 28, 2010, 14:38 GMT

Brussels/Rome - A committee set up by the Belgian Catholic Church to investigate cases of alleged sex abuse of children by members of the clergy is to be dismantled following a police raid on its offices, media reports said Monday.

The panel, made up of clergymen and chaired by a top Belgian child abuse expert, Peter Adriaenssens, was set up to allow confidential reporting of abuses, even in cases that have fallen outside of the statute of limitations and would no longer be punishable by the law.

But late last week, magistrates conducting parallel investigations ordered police to raid the committee's offices, in which computers were seized along with documentation.

The panel met Monday and decided to hand in their resignations, effective from Thursday, according to the reports.

'It is a very regrettable affair for the Church but most of all for the victims,' Eric De Beukelaer, spokesman for the head of Belgium's Catholic Church, Cardinal Andre-Joseph Leonard, told the Belga news agency.

Church authorities stressed that the privacy of victims could no longer be guaranteed once abuse cases are investigated by ordinary magistrates. The raid was prompted by complaints to the courts from a renegade priest that allegations of abuse were being hushed down.

Investigators conducted the highly-publicised search of Leonard's office and the home of his predecessor, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, that took place while all Belgian bishops were meeting with an envoy of Pope Benedict XVI.

The prelates were held in the room for several hours, their mobile phones taken off, and were all questioned. Meanwhile, police drilled through the gravestones of two former Belgian Archbishops in the hunt for hidden dossiers on child abuses, finding none.

The affair drew a furious response from the Vatican, with Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone - Benedict's deputy - saying Saturday that there were 'no precedents, not even in Communist regimes,' for such cavalier methods being used against the Catholic Church.

On Sunday a letter from Benedict to Cardinal Leonard was released, in which the Pontiff expressed 'closeness and solidarity' and complained about the 'surprising and deplorable methods' used by Belgian magistrates.

In recent months, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a slew of scandals related to paedophilia, as revelations of abuses committed by priests on minors emerged in the Unites States, Ireland, Austria and Germany.

In Belgium, the Adriaenssens Committee had been active for years, but returned in the spotlight in April, when the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, quit after admitting to sexually abusing a boy earlier in his career.