Dutch church gets 350 sex abuse complaints

More than 300 people have lodged complaints of sexual abuse by priests, the Dutch Catholic church said Wednesday.

THE HAGUE, March 10, 2010 (AFP) - More than 300 people have lodged complaints of sexual abuse by priests, the Dutch Catholic church said Wednesday, after ordering a probe into alleged childsex cases.

Since the start of this month "there have been 350 complaints," of cases spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, church spokesman Pieter Kohnen told AFP, adding that "the majority come from boarding schools across the country."

The complaints were received by an episcopal panel set up by the church in 1995 to help victims of sexual abuse by the clergy.

Dutch religious leaders Tuesday ordered a "broad, external and independent" investigation of alleged sexual abuses of children by priests and apologised to victims.

The preparation of the investigation has been handed over to former education minister Wim Deetman and is due to start between four and six weeks from now.

The church announced last week it would probe claims that pupils at a monastery school in the eastern Netherlands were sexually abused by priests 40 to 50 years ago.

That announcement, which focused on three possible victims at the Don Rua monastery in the town of 's-Heerenberg, prompted nearly 200 other alleged victims from different institutions to come forward in recent days.

Repeated revelations of paedophile priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in recent months.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on Monday accused the Vatican of hindering investigations into abuse claims, including at a boys' choir that was directed for 30 years by Pope Benedict XVI's brother, Georg Ratzinger.

On Tuesday the Vatican said Catholic authorities in Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and other countries had reacted "decisively" to the childsex allegations.