Dutch cardinal covered up clerical child abuse

This video from Northern Ireland says about itself:

Chris Moore, ‘Securing justice for clerical child abuse victims’

18 December 2012

Chris Moore is an award-winning investigative journalist based in Belfast, who has written and reported extensively on clerical and institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland. He was the reporter on the UTV current affairs programme Counterpoint which produced the ground-breaking programme Suffer Little Children in 1994, exposing the Brendan Smyth child sex abuse story. His books include Betrayal of Trust, Fr. Brendan Smyth Affair and the Catholic Church (1995) and The Kincora Scandal: Political Cover-up and Intrigue in Northern Ireland (1996).

Chris has continued to cover these and related stories ever since, including the struggle by campaigners for inquiries into abuse in Northern Ireland, on which he has reported critically for The Detail website. He is currently a Senior Journalist at UTV, carrying out a series of Insight investigations, including the recently broadcast Murder in Mauritius programme.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

“Cardinal Simonis knew of abuse by auxiliary bishop”

Today, 10:12

Cardinal Simonis knew in 2000 of abuse by his former auxiliary bishop Jan Niënhaus. He received a letter from a victim, journalist Ton Crijnen writes in a biography of the cardinal which appeared this week.

In the letter, the man wrote that Niënhaus had been guilty of “erotic romps”, writes newspaper Trouw. Simonis decided not to confront Niënhaus with the accusations, because there supposedly was not enough evidence. Two months later the auxiliary bishop died.

In April this year it was revealed that Niënhaus abused young boys in the nineteen sixties. The church had upheld in 2012 four complaints against the auxiliary bishop. That judgment was not then made public, because it was confidential.

“Nicht gewusst”

In 2010, Simonis said that the church for decades had not been aware of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” he said in the TV program Pauw en Witteman. That statement caused a great stir.

These five words were the standard lame excuse in Germany after the downfall of the Hitler regime in 1945; the subterfuge by people who did know about the nazi crimes or would have known if they would have tried, but did nothing against those crimes. If someone says “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” [We did not know], then he presumably lies.

A year later it became known that Simonis in 1991 had helped a priest to go to a new parish in Amersfoort, while he knew the man had been convicted a year previously of sexual abuse of three boys.

Simonis felt he had acted correctly, because the priest had been investigated. There would supposedly be no chance of recurrence. Yet the man committed abuse again.

Uganda: Masaka Catholic Priest Probed for Rape, Child Neglect. Today, Namuddu breaks the silence, revealing that she secretly fathered a child with the priest attached to Buyoga catholic parish in Bukomansimbi district. She not only accuses the priest of rape, but for child neglect and threatening violence: here.