Léonard ordered to pay damages to abuse victim

The Brussels Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard has been ordered to pay €10,000 (£7,436) in damages for failing to act on allegations of sexual abuse in the 1990s when he was Bishop of Namur, writes Tom Heneghan.

The civil case was brought by a former seminarian who was abused by a priest in the late 1980s, when he was a 14-year-old altar boy. Joel Devillet, now 42, filed an abuse complaint with a church tribunal, but it advised counselling for him and did not alert the police, said an appeals court in Liège that overturned a judgment exonerating Léonard.

It also said Léonard, who is head of the Belgian bishops’ conference, did not discipline the offending priest, who went on to commit further abuse in another parish. “The way in which Archbishop Léonard treated the case of Joel Devillet constituted misconduct,” the court said.

Archbishop Léonard’s lawyer said his client disagreed with the court judgment but had not yet decided whether he would appeal. “The court lists various things that certain people should have done, but nothing that Arch­-bishop Léonard categorically should have done,” he said.