March 6, 1982. Germaine Robberechts, a nun from the convent of Saints Vincent and Paul, in the small town of Termonde, in Belgian Flanders, disappears forever from the face of the earth. Almost 40 years later and despite the indications and suspects, it is not known with certainty how he died. His body was never found. Also known as ‘Sister Gabrielle’ or even as ‘Gaby’, she was a nun ahead of its time.
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His disappearance it was never clarified. A few months ago, taking advantage of some small demolition works in the convent and the refurbishment of its gardens, the Police tried to find his body for the last time. Unsuccessfully. The crime would have already expired and the main suspect died a decade ago, but the mystery of Sister Gabrielle continues to fill pages in the Belgian press.
Investigations and rumors have been going on for four decades. First there was talk of a kidnapping. Also from an elopement with a lover. And of a murder, the most plausible option. Years of police investigations put all eyes on the canon Gaston mornie, superior of the Catholic school located next to the convent and in which Sister Gabrielle herself taught drawing and aesthetics. She was also an accomplished photographer and had studied fine arts.
Gabrielle knew Mornie because she had worked for him as his driver. The Flemish press recalled that Gabrielle had had a reputation for being “a little bit special”. It refers to her doing things that the nuns of her time did not do, like driving cars. He drove for her, for her companions from the convent, and to run errands for the school.
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That driving of cars and getting to know each other made Gabrielle something of Mornie’s regular chauffeur. On those car rides, Sister Gabrielle would have discovered the canon’s unspeakable secrets and thereby signed her death warrant.
Gabrielle would have discovered that the canon was conducting illegal financial arrangements that served to finance his vices. On her journeys Gabrielle discovered, researchers believe, that when Mornie asked her to lead her to “spiritual retreats” she was actually taking him to brothels.
Weeks after one of those car trips, Mornie found some papers on her pillow in which an anonymous man recommended her to follow a life in accordance with Christian values. The canon learned that he had been discovered and investigators believe he knew it was Sister Gabrielle because she was the only person who had a set of keys that allowed her to open all the doors of the convent, where Mornie also resided.
He wanted, according to the investigation, to silence Gabrielle. On March 3, 1981 there was a strong fight between the two. Three days later Sister Gabrielle disappeared forever. The Church communicated to her family that the nun had fled, giving them to understand that she had not fled alone, but that she had a lover.
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Sister Gabrielle’s family went days after the disappearance to the convent. Then they were told the same story again but with more details. They were told that their relative had eloped with a peasant from a nearby town and were even given the details of the man. It took the family a few days to verify that the story was false and that Gabrielle’s alleged peasant and lover was a family man who was still at home and had nothing to do with the matter.
The Church persisted in its official history. In this way, she was trying to bury the matter by appealing to the shame of a family with deep Christian convictions that would frown upon the escape of a nun and would rather not give it publicity. The bishop in charge of the Termonde parish sent a letter to Gabrielle’s elderly mother to tell her that her daughter “had voluntarily left” the convent.
Justice took the minimum possible steps during those years. The first two months after the disappearance there was no judicial initiative. The newspaper said Het Laatste Nieuws that the prosecutor at the time in charge of the case belonged to the same circle of wealthy Termonde Catholic men that Canon Mornie frequented. Justice did not then investigate the first reports of sexual abuse against Mornie that were beginning to emerge from the religious college.
Years passed without the case moving forward. In 1990 Mornie was again investigated in an affair of drug trafficking in bars frequented by homosexuals. That year the police investigators recorded audios with testimonies of children and young people, former students of Mornie, in which they denounced sexual abuse.
Mornie was forced to testify plugged into a lie detector. Investigators concluded that he was lying but had no evidence to bring him to trial in the case of Gabrielle’s disappearance. The testimonies of sexual abuse were not enough to condemn him, but the Church pushed him away.
Mornie spent the last years of his life, until his death in 2011 at the age of 77, admitted to the Zelzate asylum. With him he took his secrets to the grave.
Taking advantage of this latest investigation, the family returned to the media to denounce that for decades the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the Belgian Justice agreed to bury the case and allow the main suspect to die without being tried.
IDAFE MARTÍN PÉREZ
FOR THE TIME
BRUSSELS
On Twitter: @idafemartin
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