Proven illegalities and the secret return of the crown pieces of Operation Chalice file, are covered up with a statement of alleged prescription.
In Operation Chalice, the prosecution asked for the case to be closed and no perpetrators to be prosecuted due to statute of limitations or death.
A few days after the Federal Prosecutor's Office informed the victims of the murders committed by the Nivelles gang that the investigation was closed, the same Federal Prosecutor's Office announced today that no perpetrators will be prosecuted in connection with the pastoral sexual abuse either.
More than 14 years after the start of the investigation, the prosecutor's office now wishes to bring the curtain down on the case.
The fact that no more prosecution is possible does not come out of the blue, as it was revealed that Operation Chalice was already given the final death blow on 20 March 2014.
Indeed, on 20 March 2014, the Brussels Indictments Chamber ruled that the contents of the 931 boxes seized by the investigating judge in the archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels on 24 June 2010 should be returned to the church.
We found this decision of 20 March 2014 to be wholly unlawful, as in the court proceedings that led to this decision, the victims were deliberately and in bad faith not involved in these proceedings.
It was already the third time that during proceedings before the KI of Brussels, each time presided over by the same president, the victims - contrary to the law and contrary to the ruling of the Court of Cassation - had not been summoned to debate very far-reaching and even irrevocable decisions on the conduct of the investigation.
Already in August and September 2010, very soon after the seizure of the boxes on 24 June 2010, the KI in Brussels decided to short-circuit the investigation, without involving the victims as civil parties in this debate. Our (unanswered) request to be able to contradict these proceedings was addressed to the KI, to the public prosecutor and even to the minister of justice.
Completely wrongly and in violation of the law, the KI in Brussels remained unwilling to give the victims the opportunity to oppose the torpedoing of the investigation, which was also confirmed by the Court of Cassation on 12 October 2010.
Then, in 2012, it was decided -by a differently constituted KI-, that the documents stuffed in the said boxes should NOT be returned to the church, but kept at the registry, to allow later perusal of these documents.
In the same year 2012, that particular president, who had violated the law on two occasions, could also learn that the victims were retaliating against the magistrate concerned, given that he had been knocked back by the Court of Cassation on 2X occasions. The relevant magistrate of the KI in Brussels agreed to the requested challenge in December 2012.
A good year later, however, the same magistrate saw no problem in granting the church's request to regain possession of the contents of the 931 seized boxes. Here again, for the third time, the victims were not summoned, which meant that they did not have the opportunity to point out the point of dispute that had already been settled, i.e. that the documents in question had to be kept at the registry.
Notwithstanding the clear text of the law, notwithstanding the clear rulings of the Court of Cassation on 12 October 2010, and notwithstanding the fact that the said chairman had agreed that he could no longer sit in Operation Chalice, the same chairman, by judgment of 20 October 2014 as chairman of the KI in Brussels, duly managed to return all the documents to the church stumblingly.
Instead of appealing in cassation, the public prosecutor at the Brussels Court of Appeal wrote a letter the same day ordering the execution of the unlawful judgment, thus decapitating Operation Chalice.
The content of these documents served to get a clear view of facts of sexual abuse and culpable omission, as well as to correctly assess the legal figure of prescription.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office bears a crushing responsibility for
1. the utter irregularity of the proceedings during the Operation Chalice legal process,
2. the manifest violation of the rights of civil parties,
3. the flagrant exceeding of reasonable time to conduct the investigation.
Add to this the fact that despite the long duration of the investigation, the prosecution has made no effort to pursue a thorough investigation, quite the contrary.
Evidence of this is the failure to prosecute Roger Vangheluwe for the contents of the child pornography found on him in mid-2010, crime that could never be declared time-barred.
Such shows that no prosecution was allowed to proceed.
Finally, it is also perplexing to note that the Federal Prosecutor's Office, in its communication to all media on 29 September 2023, indicated that what we termed "clandestine" proceedings, were not irregular at all, as they would have been "unilateral proceedings" that would have taken place in full compliance with the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The HrVJ's report of 16 April 2024 showed, evidently, the opposite.
The 3 by us "clandestine" (according to van Daele : "in violation of the law") sessions involved 3 proceedings at which the victims should indeed have been summoned, and were thus effectively illegal.
Today, the completion of Operation Chalice is still being dressed up in a formalistic guise, trying to make the public and the victims believe that the facts were time-barred.
In this regard, the victims argue that the statute of limitations cannot be assessed without the completeness of the documents and that the investigation was conducted in an unlawful, not thorough and biased manner.
The victims are now asking the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, on its new entry after the composition of Parliament, to further investigate the impermissible practices within Operation Chalice, confirmed by the HRvJ, and to establish a Recovery Fund to compensate the victims for their losses.
In addition, the victims are considering filing a liability claim against the Belgian state for cheating them on the Operation Chalice legal process.
They had to be treated with care. This is a legal obligation that was inscribed in the Code of Criminal Procedure after the Dutroux report and was clearly not complied with in this one.
