LETTER FROM BENELUX

On the morning of November 10, the retired priest appeared before members of parliament to talk about the countless cases of sexual abuse he has had to deal with over the past 30 years, which have just been brutally brought to light by Godvergeten ("Forgotten by God"), a documentary broadcast by VRT, the Flemish public television channel. "It's a miracle that, thanks to this program, the victims are finally able to talk about the ordeals they have been through," said 79-year-old Rik Devillé, who has been fighting tirelessly to get the Belgian Catholic Church and society to finally acknowledge the crimes they have denied for too long.

The powerful testimonies before the cameras of around 15 men and women recounting the ordeal prompted a response from the political world. A parliamentary commission of inquiry has been set up to reexamine the accounts of victims and advocates, namely the members of the Human Rights in the Church group (co-founded by Devillé) who, for a long time, carried their message in vain.

The MPs will have to assess whether or not progress has been made since 2010 and the prior commission's efforts initiated after the Vangheluwe scandal, which revolved around the Bishop of Bruges who had raped his nephew hundreds of times, but who, when a priest from his diocese told him of his desire to get married, blurted out: "You can't stoop any lower," and sacked him immediately, said Devillé.

There was also silence in the parliamentary assembly when the diocesan priest told the story of a woman who is now 83 years old and illiterate because she refused to go to school after being raped. Her love life was ruined when her husband discovered, on her wedding night, that she was not a virgin.

Eva was 14 when she was abused. After confiding in someone, she was arrested for moral offenses and vagrancy. She died during the filming of Godvergeten, without having received any compensation. "And the list goes on," deplored Devillé, who also wanted to talk about Nina, a 22-year-old young woman who reacts violently as soon as a man approaches her. At first, her mother didn't understand, until the revelation that she had been raped when she was six.

The former parish priest of Buizingen, in Flemish Brabant, has white hair, a direct gaze and a steady voice. He sometimes apologizes for his confusion, for his fear of not always being able to find the right words to speak properly about everything he has discovered through welcoming witnesses. In fact, he knows by heart the hundreds of files he used to keep in the cellar of his little house in Tollembeek before putting them in a safe place. He quoted Schopenhauer, who wrote that the truth always goes through three stages: "It is ridiculed, disputed, then taken for granted."

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