Sex abuse linked to 13 suicides

BRUSSELS (AP) — Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as age 2, an independent Belgian commission said earlier this month.

Professor Peter Adriaenssens, chairman of the commission, said the abuse in Belgium may have been even more rampant than the 200-page report suggests as all the panel’s files were seized by Belgian judicial authorities.

Adriaenssens, a child psychiatrist who has worked with trauma victims for 23 years, said nothing had prepared him for the stories of abuse that blighted the lives of victims. He called the report’s findings “a body blow” to the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium.

The report lists 507 witnesses who came forward with stories of molestation at the hands of clergy over the past decades. It says those abused included children who were two, four, five and six years old.

Family members or friends said 13 victims committed suicide that “was related to sexual abuse by clergy,” the report said. Six other witnesses said they had attempted suicide.

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