- AMSTERDAM: A Dutch newspaper reports that the dean who took over a Catholic institute for mentally handicapped youths after 34 boys mysteriously died there in the 1950s was himself later convicted of molesting boys.
De Limburger newspaper said Saturday it has obtained Victor Tilleman’s 1967 appeals conviction for multiple cases of “sexual abuse of a minor entrusted to his care.” Tilleman died in 1980. Tilleman arrived at St. Joseph’s institute in the southern town of Heel in 1954, after a three-year period in which deaths there had skyrocketed. Former nurses at the school say an unidentified Catholic brother left under a cloud of suspicion in the deaths. Neither case was publicized at the time. Prosecutors are now investigating, but say charges are unlikely 60 years later.
