Sexual Abuse of Minors in the Roman Catholic Church (the Deetman Commission report)

An independent commission chaired by Wim Deetman, a former Dutch government minister, commissioned jointly by the Dutch Bishops' Conference and the Conference of Dutch Religious to investigate sexual abuse of minors within the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands from 1945 onward. Its final report, released December 2011, drew on complaints from roughly 1,795 people who came forward directly to the commission, naming about 800 priests, brothers, pastors or lay people employed by the church, of whom roughly 105 were still alive at publication. A companion survey of 34,000 respondents, commissioned as part of the same investigation, estimated that as many as 20,000 children may have experienced some form of sexual abuse in a Dutch Catholic institution between 1945 and 1981, a population estimate distinct from the roughly 800 people the commission's own direct complaints named. The commission found the problem had been on the agenda of the Dutch bishops' own meetings since the 1940s and that the church was guilty of inadequate supervision and inadequate action, not ignorance.