Belgium: Salesian priest Luk Delft convicted of child abuse and child pornography, later transferred by the order to work with children in Central Africa despite the ban

Proceedings

1. 2012-11-01 · conviction and sentence

   Court of Ghent, Belgium. A Ghent court convicted Delft of two counts of child abuse and of possessing child pornography, arising from his assaults on two boys, aged 12 and 13, while he worked as a night dormitory monitor at the Salesian-run Don Bosco boarding school in Ghent in 2001. He received an 18-month suspended sentence and was barred from unsupervised contact with minors until 2022. The Belgian Salesian order had known of his 2001 confession to molesting two boys but transferred him internally without notifying police; child pornography was later found on his computer in 2009. After his conviction the order employed him with Caritas in the Central African Republic, where a 2019 CNN investigation found he was accused of abusing further children.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• night-time dormitory supervisory authority over boarding-school boys
• clerical status inside a Salesian-run residential school
• the order's own decision to transfer him internally rather than report him to police after his 2001 confession