The Dutch Bishops apologized for failing to adequately deal with the sexual abuse of over 20,000 children in institutions since 1945.
But anecdotal evidence in the report concerning two Catholic orders — the Brothers of Charity and the Salesians of Don Bosco — suggested “that the Catholic situation was worse than in other denominations.”
In the report, for instance, the commission found that “there is evidence that sexually inappropriate behavior towards members of the order” among the Salesians of Don Bosco “may perhaps have been part of the internal monastic culture.”
The Dutch commission, which described itself as independent, was established at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands in 2010 to investigate accusations of abuse since 1945. Its creation followed incidents at one cloister that inspired a series of accusations of abuse by priests at other institutions.
Its findings showed what some analysts said was one of the highest levels of abuse on a continent that has been forced to confront a steady stream of public disclosures about the behavior of priests and church workers toward minors.
I wonder if anybody has researched this: Do religious orders that have a particular charism towards youth have any disproportionate number of abusers in their order as opposed to others? It would seem to me to be obvious that they’d have more access and therefore it would just be sheer numbers. Regardless, it’s shameful and it continues to get worse. I pray that the Dutch bishops can take care of this swiftly.