Belgian Bishop Sexually Abused His Nephew

Tag: belgium

When the bishop of Bruges, Belgium, retired in disgrace in April after admitting to having sexually abused a child, he set off a flood of clerical sexual abuse claims in that country. Now it turns out that the victim was his own nephew.

The New York Times reported today that the 42-year-old nephew of Roger Vangheluwe, his family members and friends helped force his resignation by sending e-mail messages to all of Belgium's bishops threatening to go public with the abuse.

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After Vangheluwe's resignation, more than 500 victims of alleged abuse, mostly men, came forward. The outcry prompted in part the extraordinary raids on the church's Belgian headquarters last month, which including drilling into a cardinal's crypt looking for material related to the sexual abuse of children.

Bishop Vangheluwe's nephew did not want his name to be published by the Times. He is an artist and sculptor whose work evokes some of the pain he felt as a child being abused by his uncle.

"I'm scared, and the church has a lot of power," he told the Times.

Peter Adriaenssens, a psychiatrist who directed an internal church commission on sexual abuse before resigning in protest after police confiscated the commission's case files, told the Times that the bishop's resignation gave many the courage to speak up.

"For the first time there is a generation of men who are telling that they were sexually abused by men," Adriaenssens said.

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