Henk Heithuis – 2nd from left
At least 10 teenage boys or young men under the age of 21 were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.
Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year. The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.
Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. “These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” he said. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story…”
Two clergymen were convicted of abuse but Mr Heithuis, a victim, was nonetheless transferred by police to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St. Joseph Hospital in Veghel later that year.
There, court papers confirm, he was castrated “at his own request”, despite no submission of his written consent. Sources told Mr Dohmen that the surgical removal of testicles was regarded as a treatment for homosexuality and also as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse…
Evidence emerged on Monday that government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions. Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show that inspectors were present when castrations were discussed. The documents also reveal that the Catholic staff did not think parents needed to be involved…
Good thing the Catholic Church doesn’t support cruelty like this anymore.
Oh.
So who gets the credit for the removal of Mr. Obama’s balls?.
Michelle
There needs to be a World Court investigation conducted and if neccessary, subpoena the Pope. I would support US military action against the Vatican if they refuse to comply.
This is horrible acts against innocent children.
Benedict 2012?
Good one! Yes ! ….
…and I also plan on running naked around a fast food restaurant soon.
Nothing will be done because the majority continue to believe in the GREAT POOBA IN THE SKY.
Very Christ-like of them.
Ummm,
HOW the HELL is this supposed to STOP being Gay??
Ya know,
Im amazed at the horrors MAN partakes of others…in justification of Themselves.
I will now go and kill myself, to eliminate myself from ANY connection to the human race..anyone got about 10 gallons of lye?
… and Soaperman will rise from the pail to fight religious zealots, and cleans humanity of evil deeds!
Catholics everywhere are ignoring this because other religions have way more crimes that are abusive to children. [Citation needed]
Roman Catholicism = CULT OF THE INSANE !!!
For your own and your children’s SANITY AND SAFETY – ***STAY AWAY*** – ***STAY VERY FAR AWAY*** !!!
***PUNISHING THE VICTIM*** !!!
See, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTELY !!!
Isn’t it time we “do unto others?” and castrate any officials who abused the boys or thought it was ok to castrate others.
Roman Catholicism= Roman’s initially suppressed Christianity & Judaism, preserve (one of many reasons) their practice of idol worship. Then Romans postulated that Christianity could actually be used to suppress, dominate and control much more effectively than other contemporary means. They encroached and then corrupted the original bible/gospels by hand picking and canonizing selections that suited their purpose.
Jews wrote the teachings, Romans stole them and warped them.
OooOh And…. the Romans will have you believe that they were not responsible for Jesus’ crucification, instead, laying blame for Jesus’ fate on the heavy hearts of his followers.
Threat of castration would sure make me think twice about turning in a man of the cloth for butt-raping me – and expand my singing range to boot. Sounds like a win/win for the vatican.
Ah, the “voices of angels”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato
Holy Moly! I’ve learned something new today.
All religions should be abolished…let’s start with the democrat and republican religions. They have killed way more people than the church.
I have no problem with religion. A religion is nothing more than a set of morals dictating how one should interface with society.
I DO have a problem with people pushing their religious morals on someone other than themselves.
I’m sorry, I can’t find this amusing on any level. Those poor young men and boys were robbed of their sexual identity based on bigotry and hatred.
Hell you’d think circumcision is bad enough mutilation.
Sexual identity, bigotry and hatred? Far too mild of words to describe this. Mutilation, torture, dehumanizing children. All because the “holy” priests 1. didn’t want their dirty little secret out. 2. they needed to make sure they could continue to prey upon children. I am sure Satan is proud as a peacock of his Roman Catholic Church.
I want to know what do they do to the lesbians.
Now the secret is out who ends up in the boy’s Choir.
Wait, the only one referred to above says it was at his own request? What makes this different from a sex change operation?
Aside from the partial completion of said operation, he was under the age of consent. As a society, we need to protect our young from those who would abuse them before they are able to make those decisions for themselves.
This happens with sex change operations as well. Parents send their kids in for them.
I’ve never heard of this.
However, if true, as the parents have custodial rights, you’ll have prove this is child abuse.
Why does this surprise anyone? Religious zealots like the Catholic Church have been doing way worse things than simple castration FOR CENTURIES! (I’m sure that’s probably contrary to what McCullough thinks.)
And when you think about it, is it really all that bad? After all, if they can’t reproduce and create more religious fools – or even more people – is that exactly a bad thing?
It’s not like the church is crusading through the holly land or holding any more inquisitions or anything. I only have a problem when they assault someone who hasn’t reached the age of consent – like children.
Violating “God’s temple” which they acknowledge to be the human body seems kind of contrary and hypocritical to their whole “gospel” message and reason for existence. Then again, I could hardly expect a group of complete fools to think they understand science either.
…But at least they were humane about it and didn’t cut em off with a rusty knife or let rabid animals bite them off or anything. So you gotta give em props for that at least not following tradition and doing it in a humane non-painful way. (Sorry, I gotta go throw up now).
I don’t think the Catholic Church does any more medical experiments, exorcisms or the like anymore. It seems this is not outsourced to the likes of Mrs Marcus Bachmann or outfits like Exodus Global Alliance. Not sure if they send kickbacks to the pope. This needs research.
Mrs. and Mrs. Bachmann I do know was accused of running a conversion therapy clinic. If surgical tools are used is not clear.
Exodus Global Alliance does relies on “exorcisms”.
This torture cottage industry of the church needs to be stopped or at least taxed.
You are wrong about exorcisms. The church still practices exorcism, but they try to keep it quiet.
http://huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/vaticans-exorcist-yoga-is-satanic_n_1118965.html
It is very disheartening to know that the followers of that religion do not stand up against the church powers and demand justice.
I would not stay with such a group if they had done this and all the other things they have done.
Cursor_
OMFG! Don’t give the Republicans any ideas.
Christianity,
has gone DOWN hill ever since they mentioned, that you could be FORGIVEN for all your sins, even if you admitted them 1 time at your death..
FOOLS…
And yet catholic run health institutions in the US, don’t want to be forced to pay for contraceptives as a health benefit, for employed staff who want them. But it ok to castrate gay boys, eh? What an f-ing double standard!
Good point!
Maybe the Church made the boys pay for their own castration.
…and they were tax free!
Doesn’t matter which religion. They’re all scum.
They all run something like:
Dr. Gene Scott used to get on the airwaves and on TV exhorting people “Don’t be a wimp! Send me a thousand bucks…”
I used to watch him late on Fridays on channel 3 for the sheer entertainment of witnessing someone who was clearly off the rez., riding the crazy train, and gloating in his own smugness, rowing his dingy in the flawed gene pool with only one paddle, his lit cigar.
Years ago, Robin Williams had a great skit spoofing Scott and his rather, uh, unusual sermons.
His version had Dr. Scott comparing Jesus Christ and Spiderman aping Scott’s inimitable way of abusing a whiteboard, scribbling all over it at random, erasing at random and never actually coming to a point.
When he died of colon cancer (probably contracted from years talking out of his ass,) his wife took over the bullshit for dollars ministry, probably because it beat working for a living. (As long as there’s idiots out there, there’ll be people like the Scott’s to take advantage of them.)
The bible says that homosexuality is a sin, and those who commit it will surely be put to death. This strikes me as extreme, but for people to resist sinful temptations in this fashion is quite heroic.
I always find it amusing how religious people, especially in this country, are always crying about being persecuted, when in actuality the opposite is true
I’m religious. I don’t think I’m being persecuted.
It’s only the Religious Right Wingers who believe that.
All the Right Wingers seem to have a persecution complex.
So, which is the problem? The religion or the conservatism?
LibertyLoser raising an interesting definitional point says:
3/21/2012 at 1:08 pm
I have no problem with religion. A religion is nothing more than a set of morals dictating how one should interface with society.
I DO have a problem with people pushing their religious morals on someone other than themselves. /// So close. But significantly wrong. It would take too long to actually parse thru the mechanism of the error so let me just restate the issue to show just what religion is:
bobbo sez: I have no problem with A BELIEF IN GOD. A belief in god is nothing more than a belief in something that is totally personal to the individual person. It is very, Very, VERY RARE as there is no proof of it and every notion about the God entity that is falsifiable is immediately shown to be false. Such beliefs however are then shared with one or more other people who become convinced of the same ideology. This is what RELIGION IS. One person convincing another person of something they would not do on their own. Happens most often when the target is a child and has not yet learned to talk or think on their own.
Thats why when you look around the world RELIGION is passed to one another forming cliques, groups, blocks, societies all with the same belief. Almost as if it is a SOCIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON rather than one of personal revelation.
In point of fact as defined and demonstrated above, RELIGION totally displaces a belief in God.
Silly Hoomans. Believing what can not be proven.
I hate to tell you this, sir, but you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, some religions do believe in a God but there are many that do not.
Reverence, a root of the word religion, means to have faith in something larger than you are. Some people take this to mean in God, some in an ideal. It may not have a church house but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a religion.
You seem to religiously enjoy poking people with the stick of ignorance. See how the word is parsed to mean something other than God?
That’s the way it has been always in the name of. Killing in the name of. Money grabbing in the name of. Cutting weiners in the name of. Tourture in the name of. Anything evil in the name of.
My relatives were killed in the name of ridding society of religion.
Seriously. They were.
It is liberals who consider sex as an uncontrollable urge which must be accommodated at all costs. The Netherlands is a place where liberals achieve so much politically, even if they do restrict abortion more than in America. So here we have the liberal attitude of sex cannot be stopped infecting even the Catholic Church there, who then tried to save their congregationists’ from an afterlife in hell, when they should have just ignored the liberal attitudes that pervade their church, and counseled the parishioners against homosexual acts as sinful. This is hardly the worst act of Catholic Church led astray by liberals. We have ObamaCare, though they ended up opposing it because of abortion language. Then there is the liberation theology and support of Marxism in so many countries, which led to the deaths of millions, not to mention many homosexuals.
I find this claim hard to believe. The Catholic Church has long considered sexual mutilation immoral, including vasectomies. For example, in the middle ages, castration was done to certain boy singers to maintain their ability to sing soprano (talk about giving your all for music!). This was condemned by the Church and the practice eventually disappeared. I think it highly unlikely that a 1950s Catholic institution would prescribe or even condone castration as a “treatment” for homosexuality. If so, the doctor was acting on his own, not on behalf of the Church.
The ancient Romans among others did the same thing to create sex toys for those with certain tastes.
Also done to keep voices from changing.
Various nations did it to future high ranking government officials. They thought it reduced corruption….Okay do you think we should do this to our Congress critters? At least it would be partial pay back for what they’ve done to us.
I suppose the list of reasons for doing it continues but this isn’t a favorite topic.