Dutch MPs all for debate on castration claims

NETHERLANDS
Calgary Herald

Agence France-Presse
March 20, 2012

Dutch lawmakers have called for a parliamentary debate after a media report that local Catholics castrated children in the 1950s to “cure” homosexuality, a party spokeswoman said Monday.

The call followed an NRC Han-delsblad newspaper investigation published Saturday that said at least a dozen children were castrated to “cure them of their sexual orientation.”

It focused on the case of a man named Henk Hethuis who, it said, was castrated by priests in 1956 after testifying in a police investigation about child abuse in a Catholic boarding school.

After he testified, Hethuis was taken to a Catholic psychiatric institution and was “castrated because of his homosexual behaviour,” the paper said.

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