It is becoming increasingly clear that clergy abuse or have abused children. Why do people wait so long to come forward with abuse? And which abuse scandals in churches have become known so far?
The pastor was holy
The fact that abuse in churches is only now becoming known is mainly due to the position that clergy always had. Around 1950, the pastor, father or nun had a special position in people’s lives. You weren’t going to smear that. In addition, children who did tell were often not believed. Parents couldn’t believe clergymen did that to their children. Nowadays there is much more attention to clergy abuse because people have become more vocal and also because it is easier to talk about it. If others dare to tell it, it will become easier for others.
Secularization
The strong secularization has also ensured that people are more likely to report that they have been abused by clergy. In addition, there is not one church in the Netherlands that has all the power, but there are many more churches that are in charge. Church power has therefore been spread.
Churches are increasingly responding to abuse
It is a fact that churches have pretended for a long time that abuse did not exist or that they bought it off with money. In 2011, this is changing and churches are starting to take abuse by their clergy more seriously. In the past, a pastor was not punished, but was simply reinstated at another place. Nowadays, church proceedings and sometimes a criminal conviction await him (or her).
Church scandals
- In 1992, a major church investigation into abuse was conducted in the US. The outcome is that 13 percent of church members have ever been abused. In the same year, Reformed pastors advocated a guideline on abuse in pastoral relationships. The synod initially opposes this and wants more research into the usefulness and necessity. Cardinal Simonis, who must have already been aware of abuse in the church and the number of abusers, says that at most 100 pastors out of 3,500 have difficulty adhering to celibacy.
- In Canada, in 1992, the province of Ontario, the dioceses and the Roman Catholic churches paid $1.3 million in compensation to 649 victims of clergy abuse at two schools.
- In 1993, the Roman Catholic Church took out insurance against claims for abuse. Three priests are arrested, but the Archdiocese of Sidney denies that anything is really going on. It is stated that 1 percent of priests are guilty of abuse.
- In 1993, a 49-year-old father was sentenced to two years in prison and therapy for abusing a minor.
- That same year, Pope John Paul II called clerical abuse diabolical.
- In 1994, a priest from Almere was tried for abusing two underage boys.
- In 1994, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands were the first denomination to set up a reporting point for abuse.
- In 1994, all kinds of abuse scandals became known in Ireland. The government of Ireland even falls when it turns out that the Public Prosecution Service is deliberately working slowly in abuse cases involving young people in churches.
- In 1995, an archbishop in Austria was accused of abusing a student at a boarding school for years.
- In Belgium that same year, a defrocked priest published a book with stories of abuse by clergy.
- In 1995, the Dutch Reformed Church tightened the rules, but again no abuse reporting center was established.
- In 1996, a Lutheran bishop was forced to retire early because he was accused of sexual harassment.
- In 1997, a reformed pastoral worker was arrested for abusing children.
- That same year, four pastors in Belgium are suspended for years of abusing boys.
- In 1999, the Archbishop of Cardiff in Wales is suspected of abusing a 7-year-old girl. No evidence is found and he is acquitted.
- In 2002, the archbishop of Poznan, Poland, was accused of abusing seminarians.
- In the US there is a debate about whether pedosexual priests should be removed from office. Of the 300 bishops present, only 13 say they think so.
- In 2004, the Irish government paid out €150 million to victims of clergy abuse.
- In 2005, 100 million euros were paid to abuse victims in the Diocese of Orange in California. The Diocese of Tucson in Arizona is even going bankrupt because so much compensation has to be paid.
- IN 2006, the Protestant church in the Netherlands came up with a protocol against abuse in pastoral relationships.
- In 2009, the Bishop of Limerick was suspended. The Pope calls his colleagues to order.
- In 2010, fathers from the Canisius gymnasium in Berlin were found to have abused eighty students in the 1970s and 1980s.
- In the same year it was also announced that boys had been abused at a Roman Catholic boarding school in ‘s-Heerenberg in the 1970s.