Belgium church panel on sex abuse shuts after raid

06-28-2010 • AP

A Catholic panel investigating clerical sex abuse in Belgium is shutting down to protest a police raid on its church offices last week, the group's chairman said Monday.

Belgian authorities betrayed the trust of nearly 500 victims who had made complaints over the past two months to the church panel and blamed state prosecutors for pursuing victims too traumatized to speak to police.

"We were bait," he said.

Authorities seized church documents and computers, detained bishops and even opened up a prelate's crypt on June 24.

1 Comments in Response to Belgium church panel on sex abuse shuts after raid

Comment by Die Daily

Entered on: 6/28/2010 1:02:35 PM

The article points out: "The Catholic panel had been in existence for over a decade, but for most of that time it dealt with only 30 complaints and took no discernible action on them."

Sounds like it was time for a serious raid, to me. The church's response sounds like "boo hoo, you only gave us a decade". These poor, poor pedophiles and their cohorts of protectors now have the temerity to cry victim? What a sick joke. I bet some of these lines of investigation lead straight to the pope and his predecessors, and that's what the big stall has been about. It's kind of handy that they store the bodies of the dead pedophiles in crypts. While creepy, it sure makes DNA matching a breeze.

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