Netherlands - Dutch family living in basement 9 yrs, Ruinerwold, Drenthe Province, 15 October 2019

[ZaZara]

https://www.dvhn.nl/drenthe/Dit-is-...s-nog-steeds-een-serieus-gevaar-26526520.html

The statement that the four eldest children of Gerrit Jan van D. (68) from Ruinerwold gave in the court in Assen on Thursday is shocking. On, as it seems, the last day of the trial against their father, they insist: the 'patriarch' is and remains a serious danger. Read their whole story here.

From the very beginning, we have done so much to expose the serious abuses. We have made extensive, in-depth and very confrontational statements to the police. The public prosecutor made some of these abuses public at a hearing early last year.

The unlawful deprivation of liberty, our hostage-taking, which continued from the birth of our eldest brother in 1989 until 14 October 2019. A period of 30 years across the locations of Hasselt, Zwartsluis, Staphorst, Meppel and finally Ruinerwold.

We were kept inside, we lived in isolation, not only from the outside world but also from each other so often and for so long, we had to be quiet. Contact with the outside world made you unclean and there was a risk that bad spirits would enter your body. Gerrit Jan could, out of the blue, determine when you were under these influences and then you were punished, isolated, you had to pray. And sometimes for hours, days, weeks on end. Inside or outside under any weather conditions.

Without food, without water, in isolation.

A child should never have to go through that. We all went through that.

We, the three eldest children, were also systematically blamed for the death of our mother in 2004. Because we were the only ones who had contact with the outside world and went to school, Gerrit Jan said that her death was an external attack for which we were responsible.

How can you, as a child, live with the thought that the death of your beloved mother is your fault?

The physical punishments we all had to endure, with the sexual abuse of at least the oldest daughter (I was 13, 14 years old), and a son (12 years old) on top of that, have left lasting, indelible scars. But perhaps it was the psychological abuse that damaged us the most.

I, the eldest son, have lived in complete isolation since I was eleven years old. In a caravan, in a doghouse. I was always told that I was bad, that's why I didn't want to come close to the other children, because I didn't want to do them any harm.

That also explains why, in the years after I fled, I did not dare contact my brothers and sisters. I was still terribly afraid that my evil spirit might be transferred to them. Now I know that's nonsense, but at the time I really believed it. That is how deep the indoctrination had gotten into me. And this also applies to my eldest sister and brother. Precisely to protect our brothers and sisters in Ruinerwold.

As the eldest sister, I did not dare say anything to anyone in the years after my escape, because if I did, it would cause spiritual attacks on them and Gerrit Jan (and God) would see that as an attack on my family. I was afraid of what it would do to them spiritually if I went public with my story.

I too, the second oldest son, remember well - that during the first years of our lives outside - we mainly left each other alone. We were so afraid of the influence on each other. Any contact, any thought of it, could mean a mental attack. Especially to the younger six in Ruinerwold.

The spiritual attacks would mean that they too would be punished again. I know that one of my younger sisters was punished for a very long time for being, according to Gerrit Jan, under the influence of the eldest son who had left years before. That constant fear, the spiritual consequences of which you could not oversee. It kept us busy for so many years, even into 2019.

Alongside our younger brother and sister, we are the ones who know what we have been through and are still going through. We are not official experts, but perhaps even more importantly, we are experts by experience.

For example, we know better than anyone that Gerrit Jan still exerts influence, can exert influence and in what way he does so. He still exercises that control in a penetrating way despite his brain stroke suffered in 2016. Indeed, even after leaving the farm at the end of 2019, in prison, he still exerts control, especially over the youngest five and still tries to do so with us.


BBM

More at link

 

[Niner]

Thursday, March 4th:
*Final Decision Hearing (@ 9am CET) – Netherlands – Dutch Family (Oct. 14, 2019, at Buitenhuizerweg in Ruinerwold, Drenthe Province) – *Josef B. (58/now 59) (Austrian) tenant of the property (& carpenter), was arrested on 10/17/19 & appeared in court (10/17/19). He is suspected of complicity in deprivation of liberty, mistreatment and money laundering. Money laundering charge was dismissed (4/6/20). Released on 10/30/20 to await trial.
Trial was set to begin sometime in February, 2021 cancelled
2/10/21 Update: Josef B: last hearing was on 12/10/20, no further dates available yet.
Only for *Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten aka John Eagles (67now 68) (father) was arrested on Thursday (10/17/19) & appeared in court (10/21/19). He is suspected of complicity in unlawful deprivation of liberty, ill-treatment in the sense of damaging the health of others & money laundering. Money laundering charge was dismissed (4/6/20).
Court info from 10/17/19 thru 2/10/21 reference post #138 here:
Netherlands - Dutch family living in basement 9 yrs, Ruinerwold, Drenthe Province, 15 October 2019
2/18/21 Update: The Public Prosecutor wants to discontinue the prosecution because, according to public prosecutor Diana Roggen, Van D. is able to understand the scope of the criminal proceedings to a certain extent, but is unable to defend himself due to his brain damage. This would constitute a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that suspects have the right to a fair trial, in which they can actively participate & defend themselves. According to Roggen, this is not the case with Van D.. The Public Prosecution Service disagrees with the older children about the father's ability to stand trial. He cannot talk & answers questions with "yo-yo" & a lot of facial expressions, but it is unclear what he means & whether he understands what is asked of him. No improvement in his health situation is possible. Because the severe cerebral stroke went untreated for years, his condition has become chronic. Prosecutor Roggen said on Thursday in the district court of Assen that she is aware of the impact this has on the eldest children & acknowledges the danger of a revival of the old situation in which the father & the youngest children isolate themselves from society. Nothing has changed in Van D.'s way of thinking. He still thinks that the world will end in forty or fifty years & that he himself will return as a baby. Roggen: "However, the children are of age. That is their choice. And their right," according to prosecutor Roggen. If on March 4, the court grants this request of the Prosecution, the criminal case against Van D. will end & he will be a free man. The court will make a final decision on the prosecution on 4 March, at 9 a.m. Partial description of abuse from oldest children (post #141):
Netherlands - Dutch family living in basement 9 yrs, Ruinerwold, Drenthe Province, 15 October 2019

 

[ZaZara]

As expected...

Court declares end of criminal case for ailing main suspect Ruinerwold

The court in Assen decided this morning to declare the Public Prosecution Service not admissible. The Public Prosecutor himself had already requested this last week, convinced that a fair trial would be impossible.

According to the court, since suffering a severe brain haemorrhage in 2016, Gerrit-Jan van D. is no longer able to understand the scope of the prosecution against him, let alone to defend himself.

The haemorrhage has not only affected his ability to talk, but also his understanding of language. He may still understand that he is on trial, but he is no longer able to follow and understand a complex criminal process. He is "unfit to stand trial", according to the president of the court this morning. Prosecuting him would be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lawyer Robert Snorn of Gerrit-Jan van D. thinks it is "a fair verdict. The father would not have been able to get a fair trial because he is not capable of defending himself.

Gerrit-Jan van D. will move in with his five youngest children immediately after his release. According to Snorn, they are "happy and relieved. They have a completely different image of the way they have lived with their father all those years. They think that they had a good and loving upbringing and, thanks to their father, grew up to be mature, intelligent and creative people. They are more traumatised by the fact that they were taken from the farm than by the years before. They never felt that they were deprived of their freedom."


BBM

 

[Niner]

Thanks for that update @ZaZara - too bad for those 5 younger children. So I'm guessing nothing will happen in Josef B. case, eh?

 

[ZaZara]

Thanks for that update @ZaZara - too bad for those 5 younger children. So I'm guessing nothing will happen in Josef B. case, eh?

That was expected, but apparently, the trial against Josef B will proceed at an unknown date later this year.

Vervolging vader in zaak-Ruinerwold definitief gestaakt wegens zijn gezondheid | NU - Het laatste nieuws het eerst op NU.nl

Does that make sense now that the younger children have returned to live with their father?

 

[Niner]

@ZaZara - no it does NOT make sense that they have to live with their father. Why not split up with their older sisters & bros. How are they going to take care of a man that is this sick??!! Shouldn't have put him in a "home" to be taken care of by professionals? Strange indeed!!

 

[ZaZara]

@ZaZara - no it does NOT make sense that they have to live with their father. Why not split up with their older sisters & bros. How are they going to take care of a man that is this sick??!! Shouldn't have put him in a "home" to be taken care of by professionals? Strange indeed!!

The younger children have explained themselves this morning.
Here is part of it:

Youngest children Ruinerwold go public. Read their statement here: 'Our life was not traumatic, but the year after the raid on the farm was'.

The youngest five children of Ruinerwold father Gerrit Jan van D. released a statement on Thursday morning. They call the year after the raid on the farm in Ruinerwold traumatic, not their lives before. The children have moved about 15 times, according to their own statement. Read the whole statement here.

"Two years ago, I could never have imagined that our peaceful and fulfilling life would be shattered," the youngest son of Van D. writes, also on behalf of his four sisters. They still support their father and are going to pick him up from prison on Thursday afternoon. "My older brother didn't reveal anything of what was going on in his head. That's a pity, because in my opinion the best way to solve problems is by talking about them. Running away is always an option. I thought that my brother, like me, would understand the rather difficult situation in which our father found himself."


In an audio recording from 1995 you can hear how my father decided not to let us younger children go to school. In this recording he explained to my eldest brothers and sister that when they went to school they should not let on that they had younger siblings, because, my father said, I will raise your younger siblings myself. They will not go to school.

Why this far-reaching decision?

Our father intended for us to have an all-round education. An education in all aspects of life: scientific, practical, creative, and yes, also religious. In my father's opinion, the educational system in the Netherlands was too one-sided. Too much intended to prepare a child for a career in Dutch society and leaving too little freedom for a child to learn at its own pace.

Isn't each child unique? And who better to understand a child than his parents who have known him from day one? Yes, tell me about it. It is a big job to educate 6 children at home - and nobody is obliged to do it - but my father went for it.

We were taught to learn. Our parents thought this was important. It enables us to learn what we want. Not what our parents want, but what we want ourselves.

In addition, my father tried to be an example to us. I am aware that this part of our upbringing will arouse suspicion in many people. "An extremely clever method of indoctrination. First teach your children how to learn and then give them only yourself as an example. Then, with exhortations and a method of punishment and reward, you can make them do exactly what you want them to do, while telling them that they choose their own path. And with the older ones who saw more than only the father, there was obviously more punishment involved."

This is how many will think. I cannot speak for others, but I can speak for myself, and I say that if this was my father's intention, he did not handle it well. He would have shown me far too much of the world and not " kept an eye on me ".

I have sometimes heard a joke that you must come from "Ruinerwold" if you are ignorant of a commonly known fact. Unfortunately, this joke is not grounded in reality, because with an above-average IQ (officially tested) and a wealth of intellectual, practical and current knowledge, we do not fall into the category of stupid.

So, as far as our outer education is concerned, we are fine, but what about our psychological state? It may be a little strange to give an opinion on this, but it is certain that we look at life with a zest for life and optimism. There is no lack of humour either. We had to laugh when [ Dutch comedian ] Arjen Lubach talked about how he didn't think the situation in Ruinerwold was so bad because he had seven new viewers. He was closer to the truth than most.

We have also had a moral upbringing, we know the laws of the Dutch state and we keep the Ten Commandments. The fact that we believe in God and that we believe that every human being has a soul that is unique and will live on forever, that seems to me no problem in the Dutch society where we have freedom of religion and belief.

BBM

 

[ZaZara]

There is more, and here it is:

For most people, our faith is one of the unknown factors in the matter. Let us begin by clearing up a misunderstanding. We do not see our father as 'primeval father' or 'Messiah'. For us, he was and is always dad. No more and no less. As some people may know, our father used to be a member of the Unification Church.

In this church, Moon was known as the 'True Father'. After our father left the Moon sect, he wanted to carry on the ideals Moon had. Moon did not keep to his own ideals, my father wrote. At the time, our father adopted the term 'True Father'. But the term began to bother him more and more. Surely everyone is a true father. Surely not just one person.

The term 'true father' changed to 'first father' or 'primeval father' with the idea that he was going to be the first father to raise his children in God's way. In a conversation I had with my father a few years back, he said to me that he was also beginning to resent the name primeval father because in his opinion it was still too much like a 'Messiah'. "I am not a Messiah. I am a gardener and your father," he said to me. Maybe I'm going into a bit much detail here, but this because it gives a picture of how I know my father as always looking for points that didn't feel right and needed improvement.

Back to our faith. It cannot be defined because our faith is always growing. Just like we as humanity are always growing, always evolving. This growth makes me happy. I am convinced that every human being is unique and created by God as his child. I am not going to try to convince anyone of our faith and it is not necessary to go deeper into our faith to get a picture of us.

We are not difficult to understand because we are just people.

My father gradually found himself in a difficult situation. What do you do with 6 children who do not legally exist and who are getting older and older? The tragedy was complete when our mother died. I think we all consider this the most difficult time in our lives.

My youngest sister was only three years old. My father wanted to maintain harmony in the family. He asked my older brother and sister to be 'mediums' for our mother's soul. Here is where the charges of sexual abuse originate. I am not going to get into the argument about what exactly happened. As younger children, we saw nothing that was wrong. I do know that my father never intended to harm his children.

I remember that when I was young, my father sometimes said that if the youngest of us was 18, he would report himself to the municipality and he would probably go to prison himself, 'but you will have a nice life'. Then came the farm in 2010. In the period 1998 to 2000, my father already had the plan to live completely self-sufficient on a piece of land. This plan was put on hold because no building permit could be obtained. Now this plan could be realised in Ruinerwold.

At the same time, our father was also working on a plan to legalise us. More than 10 people knew about us. The plan was that these people would come to our farm and that we would be supported by these people to tell our story. So we were busy converting the farm into a 'training centre' when on 14 October 2019, everything changed because my elder brother had decided without consulting any of us that things had to change.

No. I am not a victim. We have been in Dutch society for almost one and a half years and I have not regretted my upbringing for a moment. We get along well with the people of this society and where we have to learn, we do so successfully.

We do want to say that we are disappointed with how our situation has been handled. Just imagine: your house is invaded one morning by a dozen police officers. When you ask if you can stay, you are promised yes, but less than a few hours later you have to leave.

Your father is arrested and wherever you had contact all your life, suddenly there is nothing for months. All the animals you have cared for for years are lost without compensation. All the hundreds of plants you looked after every day are lost. The fruit trees that are finally starting to give nice fruit are suddenly no longer your trees. 10 years of profit are ruined. All your stuff is missing for a year and when they come back, a lot of stuff is missing and nobody knows where it is. In the space of a year, you have to move 15 times.

I fully understand that it was a difficult situation for the Dutch bureaucratic system. You never experience anything like that. Who would know if we weren't cultivating drugs, if we weren't engaged in criminal activities, if we weren't perhaps psychologically unstable... then you have to take the necessary precautions. I understand that.

But I can only conclude that the year after 14 October, 2019 was traumatic and not my life before. I don't hold anyone responsible, because that is not possible in a bureaucratic system. Everyone did the best they could. But listening a little more to the opinions of the 'victims' seems wise if something like this ever happens again.

We would like our father to live with us again. My father gave us a happy first part of our lives and now we would like to give him a happy last part here on earth.

Will we go back to the way things were before? No. For those who were not yet clear: it was never our ideal to live in seclusion. But raising your children in your own way and living legally apparently did not go together here in the Netherlands.

All our lives, our father has made us understand the importance of building relationships with people. The way to develop yourself, to be happy. Ironically, we have not had this opportunity until now. From the first day the police came to our house, our father encouraged us to make contact with people.

Do we do this just because our father asks us to? No. Every parent-child relationship at some point becomes a relationship between two equal persons. Advice is welcome, but do not force it. Back or forward? Going back is not possible at all. We always go forward. And how beautiful that is!

When, on 19 March, I told my father that my older brothers and sister would prefer that he did not come and live with us, he looked rather surprised. I had to repeat my remark twice before I saw that he understood me. "But why not? I thought you were getting along well with them?", he informed me with gestures and expressions. "I don't know either," I said, "They think you manipulate us too much." My father shrugged. "They'll come around once you move in with us," I said.

I understand that our situation is unique and draws a lot of attention. But please realise that we are normal people. We want to get on with our lives. I hereby ask the media to leave us physically alone when our father moves in with us. We know enough people who care for us in a responsible and decent way. These people are enough for us."

Written by the youngest son of Gerrit Jan van D. in agreement with the youngest four daughters on 3 March 2021.

https://www.dvhn.nl/drenthe/Jongste...na-de-inval-in-de-boerderij-wel-26624786.html


BBM

 

[Niner]

Interesting!

 

[ZaZara]

Interesting!

Beats me why the courts would still want to hold the man accountable because he brought them groceries, all while the father has returned to living with his children.

 

[Niner]

Beats me why the courts would still want to hold the man accountable because he brought them groceries, all while the father has returned to living with his children.

I meant "interesting" on what the kid said in your 2 above posts! But you are right - why hold JB if he just brought them groceries! They dismissed the money laundering charges quite awhile ago - what else do they have?

 

[ZaZara]

Zaak boerderijgezin Ruinerwold met vrijlating vader nog niet voorbij

Release of father not the end of the Ruinerwold family case

The high-profile case involving the hidden family on the farm in Ruinerwold is not over after today (March 4), even though the father will not be prosecuted for his wrongdoings, because his health does not permit it. Therefore he has been released. There remains a second suspect; the handyman Josef B. He will have to stand trial, but the Public Prosecutor cannot yet say when.

Handyman Josef B. (60) was the support of father Gerrit Jan van D. He had a woodworking company in Meppel, but also rented the farmhouse at Buitenhuizerweg, where the father and six children were hiding from 2010 to October 2019. He helped them find a place to stay, and made sure that outsiders were kept at a distance.

Josef B. also did the shopping for the family and in the meantime renovated the farm, which was in a bad state of disrepair. For this, the Austrian had made a deal with the owner of the property. He rented it at a low price, and in return Josef B. - a master carpenter by trade - completely renovated the farmhouse over the years. The owner never knew that a family also lived there, cut off from the outside world, until the police removed the father and his children from the farm in October 2019.

Josef B. was immediately arrested during the police raid, and remained in custody for over a year. In October last year he was released, pending his trial. According to a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service, the handyman, like the father, is suspected of unlawful deprivation of liberty of the children. He is also alleged to have been guilty of hostage-taking. This concerned a 69-year-old Austrian man. Like Josef B., the man and his son made wooden furniture which they then sold. They did this in Austria and were business partners. The money from the furniture sales went to father Gerrit Jan van D. and his family.

According to father Gerrit Jan van D., the Austrian hostage who had come to the Netherlands had to be punished because of evil spirits. They would also have mistreated him, whereby the Austrian would have been hanging on a rope for about one and a half days. The incident would have happened in Meppel in 2010, in the warehouse of Josef B. The four eldest children have told about it and it would also have been mentioned in Van D.'s diaries.

But the suspicion of maltreatment was dropped after questioning of the Austrian man. He did not want to testify any further. He and his son were questioned by the police in Austria last year.

Handyman Josef B. was a follower of patriarch Gerrit Jan van D. The Austrian knew Van D. from the time the family lived in Hasselt. They were acquaintances, because they were both once followers of the Moon sect. The Austrian lived in the same street as the family for a while and ran a shop and business in Zwartsluis with his father. Later on Josef B. started a business in Meppel on the industrial estate. The father is said to have lived temporarily with his children in the company warehouse, before they went to Ruinerwold.

B. sees himself as a disciple of Van D. and denies all the accusations. He only did the shopping and the maintenance of the farm. According to him, nothing criminal happened at the farm and the children were free to leave the farm. He also claims never to have seen the children in person, except for the eldest. He had to give Josef work assignments on behalf of his father after his stroke.

When the case against Josef B. will be heard, depends on the agenda of the court, according to the spokesperson of the public prosecutor's office. "They still have to schedule the case, we have no idea," says Melanie Kompier.

Legal proceedings are also underway concerning the farmhouse in Ruinerwold, which according to the municipality of De Wolden has been renovated illegally. The municipality wants the farmhouse to be restored to its original state. And there may be a few more procedures to come.

The municipality of De Wolden demanded that Josef B. had to repair everything by 1 March last year. None of the renovations would meet the requirements for fire safety and ventilation. The correct permit was also missing. The municipality threatened him with a penalty payment of up to 50,000 euros.

But last year in September, the objections committee warned the municipality after lawyer Yehudi Moskowicz objected on behalf of Josef B. to the municipality's claims. Josef B. was unable to do the required repair work because he was still in prison. Moreover, the handyman did not have a key to the premises.

The council was eventually ordered by the objections committee to better do its homework and to provide better reasons for the shortcomings. This case is still ongoing.

There may also be a request for compensation from the father, Gerrit Jan van D, for the year and a half he spent in prison. Lawyer Robert Snorn still has to discuss it with his client, but is considering the request for compensation.

"The possibility is there, but it remains to be seen whether the judge will grant it. But it is legally possible, because father has been detained without a verdict. But it is ultimately up to a judge to decide whether the prolonged detention was justifiable."

Snorn cannot yet indicate whether he will go for that compensation. "Father has just been released and reunited with his five youngest children. I'm not going to be on the doorstep right away, I'll give them some time. I have three months to do so."

Snorn also has to claim the return of a considerable amount of confiscated money. During the raid one and a half years ago, almost 100.000 Euros in cash was found. At first, money laundering was suspected. But statements showed that the money had been earned honestly by selling self-made furniture by the Austrian business partners. They deposited the money in Gerrit Jan van D.'s account, who then had it withdrawn in cash. The suspicion of money laundering was subsequently dropped from the indictment. "But all this time the money has not been returned, so that still has to happen," says Snorn.

It is possible that the four eldest children will still come up with a request for compensation for the damage that their father has caused them. But their lawyer Corinne Jeekel does not want to comment on this. "First the dust of today's court ruling has to settle.

Father Gerrit Jan van D. was suspected of years of deprivation of liberty of his nine children, abuse and sexual abuse of the two eldest children. Today he was released because he cannot get a fair trial due to a stroke, the court ruled this morning.

Van D. is therefore a free man again, and was reunited today with his five youngest children. The youngest son and four daughters continue to stand by their father and do not feel like victims. They say they had a happy childhood, despite a totally different upbringing from 'normal' children.

BBM


Well, eeh.... that will be fascinating.....

 

[ZaZara]

Zoon gezin Ruinerwold: 'Verlaten boerderij was beste beslissing van mijn leven'

Son of family in Ruinerwold: 'Leaving the farm was the best decision of my life'

One of Gerrit Jan van D.'s children, who were hidden in a farmhouse in Ruinerwold for years, calls leaving the farmhouse "the best decision of his life". In October 2019, this Israel sought help, which led the police to find the farm family.

On 14 October 2019, police found a father with five adult children in a farmhouse in the village in Drenthe. Officers had raided the farm because the sixth child, Israel, had asked for help.

It later emerged that the children, despite being between 18 and 25 years old, had never been registered with the municipality. The children and their father had lived in isolation in the farmhouse for years.

On Instagram, Israel shared a small part of his life after the police raided the farm. The post comes on the day when the first episode of a four-part series about the family is broadcast on TV. A small part of the broadcast can already be seen on the website of RTV Drenthe.

In the documentary Israel, together with two older brothers and a sister, tells about their common past. Israel writes that he hopes viewers will gain "a little more insight into the complicated situation we experienced."

In his opinion, he left an "unhealthy system" by leaving the farm. Father Gerrit Jan van D. was arrested after the discovery of the family on suspicion of deprivation of liberty of all nine children and sexual abuse of the two eldest. The case against him was dropped this month. His mental health is too poor for a trial, the judge ruled.

After the family was discovered, finding his place in society was a "big challenge" for Israel. Six months before the discovery of the family, he had already sought contact with the outside world, he describes. At that time he still called himself Jan.

He also writes about the enormous media attention for the Ruinerwold story. Not only in the Netherlands was there a lot of attention for it, also abroad the farm family was big news.

"Soon it felt like an enormous avalanche that comes over you. The feeling that everything is pulled out of context and everyone has their own opinion about it, is sometimes very hard." He does feel that he was well taken care of in the first weeks after the discovery. "I got all the help I needed. I found the people I felt comfortable with."

When he left the farm, he also saw his elder brothers and sister again after years. He calls that "perhaps the most wonderful thing of all".

Edino, one of the older brothers, also wrote about this on social media: "Being reunited with all my brothers and sisters is by far one of the most beautiful moments of my life and I cherish it a lot. After so many years of compulsory separation, my greatest wish has come true."


BBM

 

[ZaZara]

Oudste kinderen van Ruinerwold doen op tv hun verhaal


Starting Wednesday evening, the four eldest children of the Ruinerwold farm family will tell their story in a series of four TV documentaries. The story must be told at some point, they think.

Documentary maker Jessica Villerius spoke about the children in the programme De Vooravond. "The pressure from the press, both at home and abroad, was so great that the children sought a way to tell their story. We thought about press conferences, talk shows, interviews, but in the end it became a documentary."

It is the story of the three eldest children, who had already fled the family, and the son who reported to the café in Ruinerwold, where the family's existence was revealed.

The children were deprived of their freedom for years, mistreated and the two eldest were allegedly victims of sexual abuse. The four are disappointed that their father is not being tried for what they call his atrocities.

They have thought carefully about their step into the limelight, which they are taking with the making of the documentary series.

"Of course there is always doubt along the way, and that storm of attention also kept going," Villerius says. "In the end they persevered. This situation arose because it was so shadowy and remained under the radar. Because it was not allowed to talk about it. The children want to break that."

In doing so, they more or less want to serve as an example. "For us it no longer helps, was their thinking, but for other people in such a situation of domestic violence perhaps it does. It has to come out of the shadows to stop this," Villerius explains the reasoning of the four children.

The documentary tells the story of the four eldest children. The five youngest children of the farm family support their father, with whom they have been living again since his release on 4 March.

They do not support the action of the four elders and claim to have had a happy childhood. They previously stated that they experienced the worst period of their lives after the raid on the farm in October 2019.

The documentary De Kinderen van Ruinerwold can be seen on NPO1 the next four Wednesdays, at 21:35.

According to the documentary maker, the children struggled for years with their loyalty to the family. They understand that this is difficult for the outside world to understand. "There is a lot of guilt and shame there," she says.

"That's why huge loyalty conflicts are involved in bringing out the charges," Villerius outlines. She says there are fond memories, but the children also tell of what they call their father's atrocities. "That was about isolation, confinement, indoctrination. What they tell us is that father always made sure that one person in the family was the scapegoat, so that the others remained on their guard."

Such a confinement or separation from the family could last a long time, says Villerius. "Then you lived in the same house but didn't see the other children. Then you were under, they called it - then you could influence other children negatively. And so he kept them apart in an almost organic way: they made sure they didn't flee or run to each other."


BBM


Pictures of the family on the instagram page of Edino van Dorsten:

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[ZaZara]

Last night, I watched the documentary 'Children of Ruinerwold'.

It was haunting. The four eldest children of Gerrit Jan van D describe how they always lived in fear. IMO, even after more than 10 years in the outside world, Shin, MarJan and Edino apparently still do not quite grasp the enormity of the abuse the father subjected his family to. The fourth child called himself 'Jan' when he first escaped. His given name is Israel.

The abuse included the mother, who was led to believe that she was Korean, when in fact she came from Austria and did not look Korean or Asian in the least.

When the mother died, she was cremated under the name of Hye Jin Moon. How does a woman from Austria by the name of Maria Magdalena manage to get a Korean ID?

Netherlands - Dutch family living in basement 9 yrs, Ruinerwold, Drenthe Province, 15 October 2019

Outline of the documentary The Children of Ruinerwold, part 1.

"I want to explain to you why you are not allowed to talk about Israel and the other children at school. Actually, God would not want you to go to such a school, but because people want it, it has to be done. But with Israel and the others, Mummy and Daddy have invented a trick. Because you go to school, they don't have to."

Father Gerrit Jan van D. addresses his eldest sons Shin and Edino and daughter Mar Jan on 28 October 1999. He is recording it on tape himself. "The best thing is to pretend they are not there. Don't say anything about them, it's our little secret. We have a little secret with God. Nobody should know, because otherwise they might put daddy in jail and you don't want that, do you?"

The first episode of the documentary The children of Ruinerwold by Jessica Villerius immediately gives a disconcerting picture of the lives of the oldest four children of the Van D. family. The family became world news in October 2019, after the father and his youngest six children were discovered in the farm where Van D. preached his own faith and robbed his children of their freedom in the eyes of the justice system.

Shortly after the discovery of the family, Villerius got in touch with the eldest three children, who fled the family one by one in 2008, 2009 and 2010, and with Israel. He paved the way for the discovery of his four younger sisters and brother in 2019 by going to the café in the village and telling his story there.

Van D. also maked many video recordings when the children are still small. Images of this are used in the documentary. You can see how the family lives at home, but also how Van D. sits in front of the camera together with the mother of the children and conjures up the spirit of someone else in the body of the 'prime mother', as he calls her.

The children tell us that their mother, who died in 2004, had the South Korean identity. Like Gerrit Jan van D., she had a past with the Moon sect. She had once been given the identity of the deceased daughter of the church leader and his wife, sons Edino and Shin explain.

"Sometimes there was a spirit in her for days. Then my father would talk to it and my mother would also behave as if she were someone else," eldest son Shin (31) says. "Later we found out that she was not Korean, but rather an Austrian woman. But she had been given a different identity and believed herself to be someone else."

Only the oldest three children are registered with the civil registry and thus attend school. The documentary shows how Israel gets emotional when, a month after the family was discovered at the police station in Meppel, he receives an identity card for the first time in his life. "It is nothing, but it means a lot", says the man who still has to get to know the world outside.

At the end of January, sister Mar Jan and brother Shin come to his birthday party for the first time in the house where he lives at that time. Celebrating a birthday and eating cake is so commonplace for everyone in the Netherlands, but for 26-year-old Israel it is anything but. "When we were little, birthdays were sometimes celebrated, but after our mother died, less and less, and in recent years no one really felt the need to," he says.

The eldest children tell how dramatic it was for them when the family, which they had fled some ten years earlier after a childhood in Hasselt, Zwartsluis, Staphorst and Meppel, suddenly became world news in October 2019. Mar Jan (30): "Very unpleasant. It feels like you have no control over your life and what comes out. Someone literally said to me: 'This is a public matter, so I have the right to know'. Then I thought, Huh? It's not like that."

"Something like 'Riddles around ghost family Ruinerwold', that's not too bad to read. There were a lot of riddles and haunted family is also true. But I don't enjoy reading things like 'The Devil of Drenthe'," says 28-year-old Edino. "I know what happened and also that my father had no intention of doing evil and did not live as the devil."

Yet not much later, the children also talk about abusive practices when, according to their father, they are 'under', or have a bad spirit in them. And the neglect of Shin and Edino, who were both not allowed to see their brothers and sisters for a long time. Father Van D. most often sees the oldest three children as 'bad' because - in contrast to the others - they do come into contact with the outside world and, according to him, can bring bad spirits with them.

"He once said that if we had not lived in these times, he would have killed us a long time ago. That was not possible, because we were registered. We would have been missed," says Edino. "In the period before I left the family in 2010, I did not see my brothers and sisters for a long time. According to my father, I had a bad influence on them. He didn't want me to come near them with my bad mind, so I couldn't influence them."

During his teenage years, Shin is also regularly separated from the rest. In the attic, for example, or in the barn. "Then I came home from school and wasn't allowed to go in. Only at night, to sleep. And the next day after school I had to go back into the shed. At some point he just didn't come to get me anymore."

"In that barn was a doghouse with some hay in it. That's where I went to lie down," he continues. "I went to sleep next to the dog, because it was warm. The next day I made sure I looked sort of decent again and went back to school."

He was constantly afraid during that time. "There was always fear. You either got your kicked or you were afraid of getting it. The worst that could happen? That he would kill you. But as a child I sometimes hoped that too, because then it would be over."

Throughout their childhood, the children were told that they had a mission. "He was the prime father and eventually he would found his own country, where we would all become the cabinet ministers", Shin seems almost ashamed when he tells about his father's bizarre ideas.

Mar Jan is certain that Gerrit Jan van D. really believes that he is the patriarch. "He has certainly had a lot of pain in his life, but he has never deviated from his path. I remember once being in the car with my father, after I had been under for three days. He had beaten me very badly. I think I still had a black eye. Then he said he thought it was hard to treat me like that and that he was glad I was out and he was proud of me."

"Now I think, yes it was also a certain way of doing things," she continued. "If you make sure that always someone in the family is the scapegoat, you keep the rest of them on their toes."


BBM

De kinderen van Ruinerwold gemist? Start met kijken op NPO Start full documentary in Dutch, no English subtitles but some old videos are in English

Ontluisterende docu Kinderen van Ruinerwold: 'Er was altijd angst'

 

[Niner]

Well dang - no English version, eh?

And thanks for those articles! Quite interesting - too bad no English versions though - maybe later... they'll "dub it".

 

[ZaZara]

If last week's documentary about the Children of Ruinerwold was haunting, this week was worse.

I write this with a heavy heart and I am having trouble to find the words. How to describe the face of a young man who remembers sexual abuse by his father? His words? His eyes? I feel that the language is escaping me, bcause it does not even come near to what I want to describe - or maybe I don't want that at all.

"I will never forget walking in woman's clothing through Meppel with my father."

Boom!

First Israel talks about how he finally managed to flee the farm.

"I take the phone out of my pocket and hand it to dad. He immediately makes the gesture I was expecting: no food for three days and I am to remain outside. In the end I see only one solution: run away and go to the police." Israel reads from his diary in episode 2 of the documentary The Children of Ruinerwold about how he decided to go to the police on 13 October 2019.

The now 27-year-old man is the oldest of the six children who lived with their father Gerrit Jan van D. in the farmhouse on Buitenhuizerweg near Ruinerwold since 2010. He fled to a café in the village, after which the family was discovered by the police a day later. (Yes, the keystone cops brought him back to that farm on the evening of his flight! Such a contrast to the difficulties he had to go through before he managed to escape. But hey! we'll bring you back and see you tomorrow! For crying out loud!)
"I did want us to be discovered, but preferably in a way that nobody would know that I had done it," he says, looking back. On 13 October, when punishment looms because of the mobile phone he has, he decides to go ahead anyway. Let them find out.

In the four-part documentary by Jessica Villerius, he and his older brothers Shin (31) and Edino (28) and sister Mar Jan (30), who fled the family before Ruinerwold between 2008 and 2010, tell the bizarre story of their childhood. About father Gerrit Jan van D., who preached his own faith, seeing himself as an patriarch and the children as arch-children, who had a mission together. The youngest six were kept hidden from the outside world. Only the oldest three were registered with the civil registry.

"When I saw Israel again, I stood with my mouth open for half a minute looking at him," Mar Jan tells of their meeting after eleven years. "I was mainly afraid that he would be angry with us, but that was not the case at all. It was actually very beautiful, that moment when we saw each other again."

Whenever the three eldest children met in the period between 2010 and October 2019, they were always talking about their siblings who lived in isolation with their father, Edino says. They struggled with what they could do. "We couldn't discuss that with others present, so when you visit each other, you talk about it. It was always confronting. We knew they had no proper life, but we were not getting anywhere. All three of us had different ideas."

"I'm not afraid of him now and I was when I left, very crazy," says Mar Jan, before she and Edino and Israel visit Gerrit Jan van D. at the prison hospital in Scheveningen where their father is still being held at the time. Due to the stroke he suffered in 2016, Van D. is paralysed on one side and unable to speak. At the meeting, which was not filmed, it turns out that their father is especially happy to see Edino. After the visit, the three discuss the special moment together.

"I really liked it, because I had prepared myself for something worse," says Israel, who has not seen his father for only a few weeks. "It was also a little strange, but he still knows me..." Edino and Mar Jan have not seen their father for years. Edino was very emotional when he saw his father. Mar Jan: "He was really proud of you, you could see that very well. I almost got angry, because he held Israel and me at a distance a lot. I thought: now you're doing the same as before: giving me the feeling that I'm not good enough."

Despite everything, Edino did miss his father, he says. But he also looks back on the period when he was about 12 years old. The mother of the family had already died of cancer. Gerrit Jan van D. often used her to summon other spirits. He was convinced that another spirit would enter her body. Edino says that the older children and handyman Josef B. were next in line after her death. "At some point we were all someone else. That made it very difficult and chaotic."

"You know yourself who you are, but you try to portray it in a good way, even though you are actually playing a game," he continued. "Had we said, 'It doesn't work' or 'I'm not that spirit, I'm just Edino', it wouldn't have made any difference. If we had done that, it was our fault, we didn't open up enough."

Both he and sister Mar Jan, according to Van D., later regularly embodied the spirit of their mother and had to behave like his wife. Both were sexually abused. Mar Jan does not want to talk about what exactly happened. Edino remembers that his father sometimes pretended that he was his dead mother for weeks on end. "Then I sat and slept next to him and once I even walked through the town here in Meppel next to him, in women's clothes."

He fervently hoped at that moment that he would not run into any classmates. "I really felt that everyone was looking at me. We also walked through the Main Street, in the middle of the town. I will never forget it." He smiles, but his eyes tell something else.

When asked what the worst thing was, what his father made them do when Edino embodied the spirit of his mother, there is silence for a moment. "He treated us like his wife then, so you also slept with him and so on..."

He calls the encounter with his father confrontational. "We knew that the situation would one day become untenable. We had thought that he would get sick or something else would happen, but not so much that he would have a stroke and finally become a child again. So now the roles are reversed."

Mar Jan: "When I saw him again, it was really a different person for me. I recognised behaviour from before. It was upsetting to see and it made me angry, but then I thought: you are not the person I want to get angry at anymore.

In 2004, the mother of the nine children died of colon cancer. "At first we just called her mum. After that we didn't. According to my father, she had lost her faith and that was one of the reasons she died of cancer. His belief was that if you believe, you can overcome anything," Israel says. "In retrospect, that's painful, because I think they chose not to ler her have chemo."

After being cared for at home for a long time, their mother went to a hospital, where she later died. "My father and Edino were there. I remember my father coming home and not telling me right away. At some point he said: 'Mother is here with me now' and then we got it," Israel recalls.

"We all went along to the cremation in Zwolle and there we had to say that we were children of a friend of mother's," he refers to himself and his younger siblings. "There were also many other people, such as friends of my father, who knew nothing about our existence. In fact, hardly anyone knew that we were not registered. They also didn't know that we were grieving for our own mother."


BBM


De kinderen van Ruinerwold gemist? Start met kijken op NPO Start

'Dat ik in vrouwenkleding met mijn vader door Meppel liep, vergeet ik nooit meer'

 

[Niner]

Thanks for that update!

 

[ZaZara]

Just when you thought things could not get worse, the third episode of The Children of Ruinerwold takes you there.

It is hard to accept that this man, this father, has escaped justice after all the cruelty he inflicted for so many years on his children.

Father about to kick a toddler from her chair:

Fasther telling the girl that it was all a joke:

All children had to watch! And Daddy made a movie. Look how passive the mother is. She is nothing. The father prays.

"I had to spend so long in a cold bath that I emerged crippled"

Last summer, the elder children returned to their former home in Zwartsluis.

"I still recognise the smell." Edino films a messy room. He and his brothers Shin and Israel are back in their parental home in Zwartsluis. They want to empty the house. It is the summer of 2020 and many memories surface. "Even my sleeping bag is still hanging there."

The third episode of the documentary The Children of Ruinerwold, made by Jessica Villerius, once again leaves you silent. Once again the madness of father Gerrit Jan van D. is portrayed, but in an even more cruel way than before. On footage made by himself in the nineties, we see how he violently throws one of his younger daughters - still a toddler - off a chair, while he prays aloud in German and English before and after.

Of course it was only a game, he later consoles the sobbing girl, while his wife, the mother of all nine children, watches motionless in the background with the youngest member of the family on her lap.

"It is clear to see that she had absolutely no position of power in the family," says eldest daughter Mar Jan (30), who has looked back at the footage. The children's mother died of cancer in 2004.

"I find it very difficult now to see what position she had and what her life was like. All the little things I hear about her upset me. Then I think: she had nobody to share these things with. We were small and normally you share things like that with friends," according to the woman who fled the family in 2008. "It makes me very sad when I ask myself: what was her life like and how did she feel?"

Like the children, Van D.'s wife also lives in isolation under his regime. The family lived successively in Hasselt, Zwartsluis, Meppel and Ruinerwold, secluded from the outside world as much as possible, while Gerrit Jan van D. preached his own faith and was convinced that he and his family had a mission.

Shin (31), Mar Jan, Edino (28) and Israel (27) tell the story of their lives. The oldest three flee the family before Ruinerwold, the youngest ensures that the police find their father and the youngest five children in the farm in Ruinerwold in October 2019. He himself lived there for nine years.

Because the eldest three children did go to school when they were young, they were also the ones who came most into contact with bad things, according to their father. Because, according to him, there is a chance that they will have a negative influence on the youngest six, he regularly isolates the oldest three.

Van D. has two properties in Zwartsluis. While the rest of the family lives in one, he often locks up the elder three in the other. He builds hidden rooms in it, where they are locked up separately sometimes for days.

"Sometimes you could go to school in between and then you had to go back upstairs. Sometimes you had to stay there only one night and sometimes longer", Mar Jan recalls her father's tyranny. "And sometimes he would come rushing up the stairs and then he would yell at you what was wrong or you would get a beating."

Gerrit Jan van D. regularly has the idea that an evil spirit has taken possession of his three eldest children. Then they are 'under', as he calls it, they are punished and have to pray. Shin: "One of the worst things he did was strangle. He would squeeze your throat until you felt like you were close to death, then you would gasp and he would let go. That happened regularly."

The children were also beaten and Shin had to take cold baths several times. "That happened when I came home from school and he saw that I had had sexual desires for girls. I had to go in for so long that I came out crippled. And lying in it was not even the worst part. It was the fact that I was at school and had to go home again and then I was almost sure that I had to go in again. The anticipation..."

Mar Jan: "Sometimes at night I would lie on the concrete floor by the stairs. In such a way that if I heard something downstairs, I could rise immediately to show that I was still praying and not sleeping."

Edino also remembers strangling. "The fixed pattern in punishments was usually: cold shower, no food, confinement and then physical punishment. Sometimes we also had to endure humiliation. I remember one time we all had to throw mud at Shin. He stood there in his pants and we had to throw."

The eldest three eventually fled the family one by one in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In theory, they could have done that much earlier, but their father's influence and the fear he instilled in them, went far.

"I know that as a child I always lived in fear and so did the others, although perhaps not everyone will admit it," Edino recalls. "It was part of the whole childhood. There were times when you were asleep and then suddenly you were dragged out of bed, downstairs. Then you had done something wrong. At times like that, you are scared to death."

It bothered him a lot later on, he acknowledges. "I only needed someone to come into my room or I'd panic. I linked it very much to the past.

Mar Jan beams when she returns from the first visit to her youngest brother and sisters, whom she has not seen for over eleven years. "It was a very positive experience. But when you sit there with them, I realise that they are still the same and that I have changed. I felt so different. Somehow that made me sad too, the thought that I am no longer like them."

The youngest children remain loyal to Van D. after his arrest, while the oldest four want him to be prosecuted for what he did to them. Edino and Israel also visit the youngest five. Edino told the youngsters about the abuse by his father. "But I don't think they understand. They don't know the concept at all, because they haven't had a normal upbringing. They have no sexual experience at all. They literally have no idea what it means."

The eldest four are also discussing the first hearing in the criminal case against their father on 21 January 2020 at the court in Assen. They will follow it together with the youngest five in one room. The moment the public prosecutor reads out the summons is very confrontational for them. Mar Jan: "For the first time, someone spoke about our lives. She summed it up very well, but it did touch me."

The four of them can only guess what it must have been like for the younger children. "They - all but one - have also stated that things happened," Edino responds. "And maybe they condemn it too, but they think that in the end God is the one who has to judge this."

It has since become clear that Van D. is unable to stand trial due to the effects of a brain haemorrhage in 2016 and the criminal case against him has been terminated. Mar Jan does not think it is fair to get angry with her youngest brother and sisters because they still support their father. "They can't help how they were raised. I do think they should eventually open their eyes to reality."

She does struggle with feelings of anger, she acknowledges. "I can be angry with my father, but the man who did all this is no longer here. So that's where it ends."

BBM



De kinderen van Ruinerwold gemist? Start met kijken op NPO Start

'Ik moest zo lang in een koud bad dat ik er kreupel uit kwam'

 

[ZaZara]

Onverwachte wending in gezin Ruinerwold: ’Mijn vader heeft dingen gedaan die niet te rechtvaardigen zijn’


Unexpected turn in Ruinerwold family: 'My father has done things that cannot be justified'

RUINERWOLD - An unexpected turn of events in the family of 'Ruinerwold father' Gerrit Jan van D. One of the younger children, who up to now have always supported their father, has now also left the family.

This was revealed in the fourth episode of the documentary series Kinderen van Ruinerwold. After the credits the following quote suddenly appeared from one of the youngest children. This afternoon, one of the youngest children said: 'Also in my experience, my father has done too many things that cannot be justified. I therefore no longer live with him.'

Van D. has nine children, six of whom lived in the farmhouse in Ruinerwold for ten years. Five of them have stood by their father until now, even after the police raid in Ruinerwold.

BBM