Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch C at ho l i c i n s t itut i on s , and church officials failed to adequately address he abuse or help the victims, according to a long-awaited investigation released on Friday. The report y the an indep e n d e nt c ommi s s i on s a i d Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abused “to prevent scandals.” The suspected number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to a summary of the eport. Based on a survey among more than 34,000 people, the commission estimated that one in 10 dutch children suffered some form of abuse. The number doubled to 20 per cent of children who spent part of their youth in an institution — whether atholic or not. The commission said it received some 1,800 complaints of abuse at Catholic schools, seminaries and orphanages and that the institutions suffered from “a failure of oversight.” It then conducted the broader survey of the general population for a more comprehensive analysis of the cale nd nature of sexual abuse of minors. The commission was set up last year under the leadership o f f o Minister Wim Deetman to investigate allegations of abuse dating from 1945. Deetman said that the problem of abuse continued in part because the Catholic church organisation in the Netherlands was splintered, so bishops and religious orders s om e t i m e s w o r k e d autonomously to deal with abuse and “did not hang out their dirty laundry.” However, he said that the c o m m i s s i o n c o n c l that “it is wrong to talk of a culture of silence” by the church as a whole. T h e D u t c h B i s h o p s Conference scheduled a Press conference for Friday afternoon to respond to the report.
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