Brussels, Belgium: A former bishop’s televised admission that he sexually abused two of his nephews caused an uproar in Belgium on Friday, with the prime minister, senior clergy and a prosecutor expressing shock at the way the ex-prelate made light of his offenses.
In an interview that was aired on Thursday Roger Vangheluwe, the former bishop of Bruges, spoke of his sexual abuse as “a little game,” that involved fondling, but no “rough sex.”
“I was never naked” and the abuse was never about “real sexuality,” said Vangheluwe, 74.
He resigned as bishop in 2010 after admitting he had abused one of his nephews for 13 years until the boy was 18. In the TV interview aired Thursday, he revealed that he had abused a second nephew “a few times, a couple of times, not for years.” Vangheluwe apologized for the pain he had caused, but denied being a pedophile. “I never felt the least attraction to a child,” he said. “And I still don’t. From me toward him (the nephew) there was a bit of intimacy that occurred each time we saw one another. And of which we later said, ‘That’s not right.’”
The abuse occurred at sleepover family gatherings, Vangheluwe said.
The reaction from the Belgian church which has been devastated by hundreds of abuse cases and allegations was sharp disapproval.
Guy Harpigny, the bishop of Tournai, said that, at a time when the church is reaching out to abuse victims, “along comes a former bishop who says it was only little games. This man is either sick, or it is a normal reaction from a pedophile.”AP
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