Deaths of 37 children were ‘caused by monk’

Published on 29/06/2012 00:00

Thirty-seven boys who died in the early 1950s in a Dutch psychiatric hospital run by the Catholic Church were probably killed by a monk in charge of their care, prosecutors have said.

It was the latest in a string of scandals to hit the church in the Netherlands, where an independent commission found last year up to 20,000 minors were sexually abused in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries between 1945 and 1981.

In a report released yesterday, prosecutors said the boys who died between 1952 and 1954 in St Joseph’s in the south- eastern town of Heel had most likely been given morphine overdoses by a Brother Andreas. Prosecutors said the monk had died and there were no known living suspects. If he had been alive there was enough evidence to launch a criminal investigation.

The Dutch inquiry was launched after the commission found an unusually high number of deaths at the hospital during the period. It said Guus Vestraelen, the institution’s doctor, had almost certainly covered up for Brother Andreas by misreporting the causes of death. He too has since died.

“On the basis of the facts established … Brother Andreas would be a suspect if he were still alive,” prosecutors wrote, noting that any offences committed in the 1950s might have lapsed under Dutch law.

They said the diocese of Roermond, in which the hospital was located, had learned of the deaths by 1958, but had not informed authorities.

Roermond expressed regret that an investigation in the 1950s had failed to establish the facts.