articles:
- Dutch Church Is Accused of Castrating Young Men
- Catholic church abuse: inspectors knew minors were castrated
- Sexual predators rarely committed under Justice program
- ‘Standing Silent’ follows uncovering of sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community
Dutch Church Is Accused of Castrating Young Men
By STEPHEN CASTLE
March 20, 2012
BRUSSELS – A young man in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was surgically castrated decades ago after complaining about sexual abuse, according to new evidence that only adds to the scandal engulfing the church there.
The case, which dates from the 1950s, has increased pressure for a government-led inquiry into sexual abuse in the Dutch church, amid suspicions that as many as 10 young men may have suffered the same fate.
“This case is especially painful because it concerns a victim who was victimized for a second time,” said Peter Nissen, a professor of the history of religion at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “He had the courage to go to the police and was castrated.”
It is unclear, however, whether the reported castration was performed as a punishment for whistle-blowing or what was seen as a treatment for homosexuality.
In 2010, about 2,000 people complained of abuse by priests, church institutions or religious orders in the Netherlands after the Roman Catholic Church commissioned an inquiry. It finally concluded that the number of actual victims over several decades could be 10 times higher.
That committee, led by Wim Deetman, a former education minister, was presented with evidence of the castration case when it was contacted by a friend of the young man, who was castrated in 1956, two years before his death in a road accident….
The victim, Henk Heithuis, lived in Catholic institutions from infancy after being taken into care. When he complained about sexual abuse to the police, Mr. Heithuis, 20 at the time, was transferred to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St. Joseph Hospital in Veghel, where he was castrated….
Mr. Dohmen, the investigative journalist who broke the news in the daily NRC Handelsblad, said that correspondence from the 1950s and Mr. Heithuis’s testimony to Mr. Rogge suggested that there could have been an additional nine cases….
Mr. Dohmen said that the man accused of abusing Mr. Heithuis was investigated but not prosecuted. He was transferred to Nova Scotia, where he started a home for boys.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/world/europe/dutch-church-accused-of-castrating-10-young-men.html
Catholic church abuse: inspectors knew minors were castrated
Monday 19 March 2012
Government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while being looked after in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions, local paper the Limburger reported on Monday.
The NRC reported on Saturday at least one boy under the age of 16 was castrated to ‘help’ his homosexual feelings while in Catholic church care in the 1950s.
Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show inspectors were present when the castrations were openly discussed, the Limburger said. The minutes also showed directors of the institutions did not think parents needed to be involved in the decision-making process when minors were involved.
Report
But there are indications at least 10 other boys were also castrated, the NRC reported on Saturday. The claims were not included in the Deetman report on sexual abuse within the Catholic church which was published at the end of last year….
The Deetman committee was set up by the church itself in 2010 after the sexual abuse scandal broke. It reported in December having identified some 800 priests and monks who abused children in their care between 1945 and 1985.
In addition, church officials, bishops and lay people were aware of what was going on but failed to take action to protect children, the report said.
Politician
The NRC also said on Saturday the final Deetman report did not mention that a leading politician with the Catholic people’s party KVP had tried to have prison sentences dropped against several priests accused of abusing children in 1958. Vic Marijnen, who went on to become prime minister in 1963, was chairman of the children’s home where Henk Heithuis and dozens of other children were abused until 1959. http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/03/catholic_church_abuse_inspecto.php
Sexual predators rarely committed under Justice program
By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
3/20/12 BUTNER, N.C. – Inside the sprawling federal prison here is a place the government reserves for the worst of the worst — sexual predators too dangerous to be set free. Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation’s most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended.
But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men.
Far more often, men the U.S.Justice Department branded as “sexually dangerous” predators remained imprisoned here for years without a mandatory court hearing before the government was forced to let them go, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain. Some were imprisoned for more than four years without a trial before they were freed.
Dozens of others are still waiting for their day in court. They remain in a prison unit where authorities and former detainees said explicit drawings of children are commonplace, but where few of the men have received any treatment for the disorders that put them there.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-13/dangerous-sexual-predators-detained/53621210/1?loc=interstitialskip
USA Today: Sexual predators rarely committed under DOJ program
By James R. Marsh on March 20, 2012
USA Today has an excellent investigative article on the DOJ’s federal civil commitment program for sexually dangerous sex offenders. Not surprisingly, many of those requiring indeterminate incarceration were convicted of child pornography crimes.
According to the article:
Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation’s most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended.
But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men.
The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain.
Dozens of others are still waiting for their day in court. They remain in a prison unit where authorities and former detainees said explicit drawings of children are commonplace, but where few of the men have received any treatment for the disorders that put them there.
Despite that, neither the Justice Department nor other watchdog agencies have offered any public assessment of how well the federal civil commitment law works.
We have repeatedly pointed out that individuals incarcerated for possession, receipt and distribution of child pornography are significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act. http://www.childlaw.us/2012/03/usa-today-sexual-predators-rar.html
‘Standing Silent’ follows uncovering of sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community By Emily Wax, March 19, 2012
One by one the victims stood and described their alleged molesters: the Torah teacher, the rabbi, the ice cream truck driver, the man at the mikvah.
That meeting, held nearly six years ago in a small room in a synagogue in Pikesville, just outside Baltimore, went on for four hours. Seated in a circle with the other victims was Phil Jacobs, a Baltimore Jewish Times journalist. He was not there as a reporter. He was there because he, too, had experienced sexual abuse.
But after the meeting, a young man who knew Jacobs was a journalist approached and asked to be interviewed, to have his story told. That was the beginning of Jacobs’s effort to document sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community, bringing the harrowing experiences shared by the 18 victims in that room out into the open.
The first of his stories, “Today, Steve is 25” was published in February 2007, 10 months after the Pikesville meeting.
That process of reporting and writing has been made into a documentary film, “Standing Silent,” directed by Scott Rosenfelt and now being shown at film festivals across the country. Partially funded by a Sundance Institute grant, it details how Jacobs, an Orthodox Jew himself, has been credited with — and criticized for — uncovering a painful secret in Baltimore’s Orthodox community….
There are no hard numbers to document the extent of the problem, but Elaine Witman, director of the Shofar Coalition, a nonprofit agency that provides services for victims of sexual and other abuse in the Baltimore area’s Jewish community, says the center is seeing an increase in the number of Jews coming forward to report abuse. In 2010, 67 people requested help for childhood sexual abuse from the coalition. That number nearly doubled in 2011, to 132 people, said Witman, who attributes the increase to Jacobs’s articles and the coalition’s efforts toreduce the shame that has kept the issue quiet for so long.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/documentary-standing-silent-recounts-efforts-to-uncover-abuse-in-orthodox-community/2012/02/28/gIQAewi9NS_story.html
