Five of the seven Catholic church abuse victims to get the maximum compensation payment of €100,000 are women, the Volkskrant reports on Friday.

The Volkskrant says this is notable because most attention has been paid to the abuse of young men at boarding schools. In addition, women do not account for many of the 127 compensation payouts made by the middle of last month.

Bart Holthuis, chairman of the committee allocating compensation, says the women who have received compensation have all had serious psychological and physical problems deriving from years of abuse. They have attempted suicide and failed to build a normal relationship.

Family friend

These women were often abused for a long period at home by a chaplain or priest who was considered a friend of the family.

So far the church authorities have paid out €3.1 million to abuse victims. Compensation is made on a sliding scale of five.

On Monday, the Deetman Commission, which carried out the original investigation into church abuse, is presenting the results of a new report focusing on the abuse of women and girls.

Lessons

Meanwhile, a history researcher in Brabant has published a paper which shows trainee priests were given special lessons about sex from 1900 to 1965. These lessons not only included sexual positions but sex with animals, children and dead bodies.

‘Catholic spiritual leaders were actually very well informed about sex,’ René Bastiaanse of the Brabants Historisch Informatiecentrum, told news agency ANP.

The aim of providing such detailed knowledge was to help priests react to the confession of ‘sinners’, Bastiaanse said.