The investigation into the family discovered last October on a remote farm in the Netherlands continues. The father was heard at a first hearing this Tuesday, in the court of Assen (north), pending the opening of the trial against two suspects, including the father of the six children.
The father beat and mistreated them to drive out "evil spirits" and keep them from "impurity" from the outside world, the prosecution said in Dutch court on Tuesday at this first hearing.
"Nobody knew about their existence"
The family was discovered in October by police in a small, closed room inside an isolated farm in Ruinerwold, a village in Drenthe province, where they had lived as a recluse for almost a decade. Many questions remain around this strange affair which took place in a locality where nobody seemed to know the occupants of the farm or even to have been aware of their presence.
One of the children was hung up by the hands and feet, kicked and locked in a small space, while another was forced to spend a summer locked in a dog kennel, according to the prosecution. The father, identified by the media as Gerrit Jan van D., 67, “separated the youngest children from the outside world from birth. Nobody knew about their existence. They were also not registered with the civil status and therefore did not really exist ”, continued the public prosecutor.
A "figurative lock"
Gerrit Jan van D. was arrested in mid-October, a few days after police discovered him and five of his children who were kept in the farm. Her sixth child, who lived on the farm, a son aged around 25, went to a village bar in a "confused" state and alerted the authorities.
Absent at the hearing Tuesday for health reasons, the father, who was once part of a sect, is accused by the prosecution of having deprived the children of their liberty, of having "beaten them, having given them kicking them and depriving them of food and drink. " This mistreatment represented for the children a “figurative lock on the door”, estimates the accusation. "No physical lock is required as evidence of unlawful deprivation of liberty or hostage taking," she added.
Suspected sexual assault
The man is also suspected of having sexually assaulted two of his three oldest children who left the family home and did not live in the Ruinerwold building. He is also suspected of money laundering. The farm tenant, Josef B., a 58-year-old Austrian citizen, arrested a few days before the father, is also suspected of violating the liberty of others.
"I feel like it is a witch hunt," Josef B. said in court on Tuesday, quoted by the Dutch news agency ANP. "I have a clear conscience (...) I have not deprived anyone of their freedom," he said. At the end of the so-called "pro forma" hearing, that is to say, devoted to the administrative management of the file, the judge will decide to keep the suspects in detention, pending the trial on the merits.
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