Dutch clerical child abuse survivor interviewed

Marcel Roomans, on the left, with two brothers

“I will not let the perpetrators silence me again”

Today, 07:14

The 73-year-old Marcel Roomans was sexually abused in his boyhood at a Roman Catholic boys’ school in Maastricht. Roomans reached a settlement with the Friars of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary in Maastricht, a congregation that had schools and boarding schools. He was at the Aloysius School in Maastricht.

When Roomans was in the third grade, a friar rubbed his genitals with ointment. Later he was abused by another friar in a pitch-dark closet at school. After ten minutes it was over. “He got an orgasm, I suppose,” Roomans said to NRC Handelsblad daily, which pays attention to all the secret settlements in cases of sexual abuse within the church.

“I was lured to the school with a gift. Often on Saturdays because the school then was practically empty. It was nasty, mean and devoid of humanity.”

The Deetman commission received sixty reports of sexual abuse by friars of that congregation. The Maastricht friars have arranged a total of 63 settlements. Of those abuse cases it is not known what exactly happened.

Roomans himself chose mediation. “I wanted to look the one who was responsible for the friars who had abused me in the eyes.”

Fellow victims did sign such [secret] agreements. Roomans: “Ah, how does that happen? You get four A4 pages in your hands and you want it to be finished. Then you might not read everything accurately.” Roomans received 37,000 euros.