THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A media report linking half of the cardinals and bishops who served in the Netherlands between 1945 and 2010 to abuse cases has drawn the country’s Catholic Church into the church’s global sex-abuse and cover-up scandal.
The leader of a group of Dutch victims of abuse by Catholic clergy called Monday for the church to make public all it knows about such cases.
“If they want this misery to end — these are crimes committed against children, you can’t just walk away from that — then they have to make things public and set up a new system where people can file complaints,” said Bert Smeets, an abuse victim who represents a group of survivors called Mea Culpa.
Smeets’ comments came after a report by Dutch daily NRC linked 20 of 39 bishops and cardinals to abuse. The paper reported that four bishops committed abuse and a further 16 senior clergymen transferred priests who had been accused of abuse to new locations.