Netherlands Announces 2000 Catholic Clerical Sex Abuse Cases

RedTracker| If Pope Benedict thought he might get a Christmas break, especially after the Vatican hinted that it is looking to buy a ‘green’ popemobile, he knows that answer is ‘no’. Figures released Today in the Netherlands show that almost 2,000 people had made complaints of sexual or physical abuse against the church, in a country with only four million Catholics.

In a new book “Pious Sinners” about clerical sex abuse in the Netherlands, author Joep Dohem argues that instead of dealing with accusations of pedophilia, there was often a pattern of moving known abusers around the Netherlands, often exiling them to small, rural communities. via NYTimes