NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands
The Roman Catholic church actively encouraged the castration of homosexual boys and men in the 1950s and ’60s, according to scholars who testified to the Dutch parliament. Medical historian Mart van Lieburg told parliament that a Dutch bishop ordered surgeons to perform castrations.
Professor Van Lieburg was speaking at a hearing called to clarify reports of castrations in Roman Catholic psychiatric care. He declined to name the bishop or the surgeons who had made the allegations. Another historian, Marnix Koolhaas, told parliament that several pastors sent boys to a doctor with orders to have them castrated.
Further research neeeded
Christian Democrat parliamentarian Madeleine van Toorenburg is now calling for new scholarly research into castrations. She told Dutch broadcaster NOS she wants to know whether they were performed on minors, or on anyone without consent. She stopped short of demanding a parliamentary inquiry.
The Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reported last month that Henk Heithuis, a minor, had been forcibly castrated as a punishment for blowing the whistle on sexual abuse by a Catholic brother in 1956. The incident was reported in 2010 to the Deetman Commission which was investigating sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church. The church-installed commission did not investigate the case and made no mention of it in its final report last December.
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