Belgium’s Salesian order has defended its decision to send a priest convicted of child abuse to work with Caritas in the Central African Republic, where he has been accused of abusing children again. Fr Carlo Loots, Belgian provincial vicar, and spokesman for the Salesians of Don Bosco, also said the order had learned from the incident and changed some procedures.
“We’ve learned that all communications involving such cases must be written and documented, rather than exchanged verbally at the risk of being passed over and forgotten,” Fr Loots told the Catholic News Service on November 26.
“We’ve also improved our safeguarding policy and learned to be much more prudent in dealing with an abuser. We thought at the time we’d taken the right decisions, but we must recognize doing our best at that moment wasn’t enough.” Investigations continued into activities by Salesian Fr Luk Delft, who was accused in a CNN report of abusing children while working in the Central African Republic.
In 2012, after being convicted of child abuse and possession of child pornography while working as a Salesian school teacher and aid agency director, Fr Delft was given an 18 months’ suspended jail sentence and a 10-year ban from contact with children by Ghent’s correctional court.
However, in 2013 he was hired by Bishop Albert Vanbuel, a Belgian and fellow Salesian, to work with Caritas at a church camp for internally displaced people in Central African Republic’s Kaga-Bandoro Diocese. After Bishop Vanbuel retired in October 2015, Fr Delft was appointed national director of Caritas in Bangui.
However, CNN said Fr Delft continued to have access to poor and vulnerable children; it said there were allegations of abuse in Kaga-Bandoro.
Fr Loots told CNS sending Fr Delft to Central African Republic had seemed a “reasonable solution” in 2013 when Bishop Vanbuel requested help with “food deliveries and distribution” at his diocese’s refugee compound. He added that the Belgian court’s probation commission had had “no idea about the situation in the CAR” when it approved the priest’s assignment. Although Bishop Vanbuel had been informed of Fr Delft’s background and agreed to supervise him, Fr Loots said, he also had “clearly no idea how a pedophile really functions.”
“Bishops and religious orders always face a big problem knowing what to do with abusers of young people – there’s no death penalty for this, so we can’t kill them, but nor can we send them to a desert island,” he told CNS. “Instead, we have to look for a solution, and the philosophy is that such people deserve a new chance – but not in the same context or situation as previously. Courtesy: catholicherald.co.uk
