NETHERLANDS
The Republic
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – 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 said on Thursday.
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 on Thursday, prosecutors said the boys who died between 1952 and 1954 in St Joseph’s psychiatric hospital in the southeastern town of Heel had likely been given morphine overdoses by Brother Andreas.
Prosecutors said Brother Andreas had died and there were no known living suspects. If he had been alive there was enough proof to launch a criminal investigation.
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