Talking with outsiders is taboo in the criminal environment. At least, that’s how the cliché wants. In spite of this image, criminals often betray each other anonymously with the police. And they also know how to find the press if publicity can serve a goal.
In the American crime series The Sopranos Is the idea that criminals do not talk about their world in a playful way. Main character Tony Soprano, a Mafia boss from New Jersey, goes into therapy because he sometimes faints because of panic attacks.
The series thus gives a stimulating view of the psyche of underworld figures. In Close conversationsa podcast series about attachment and relationships between parents and children, therapist Meta Herman de Groot does something similar.
It is the author of the book I also have to lose my bastard managed to tie Klaas Otto for a conversation. The founder of motorcycle club No Surrender speaks Free over his traumas and those of his children.
Suicide tendencies
Klaas Otto has been registered as a criminal leader since the founding of his motorcycle club at the end of 2012 and his association with Heineken kidnapper Willem Holleeder. It has everything to do with the image of his person. Although Otto has also admitted that he himself contributed to this through his media performances.
“I am not a choir juice but also not a top criminal,” says Otto in the podcast. “I would be involved in liquidations and my lawyers warned that the police wanted to lock me up for life. That’s just not true, but I have been in almost a year and a half in virtually total insulation.”
Because of that long -term insulation and the lack of contact with family and friends, he got suicidal tendencies. “I was done with it, with life. The idea that I had to spend life in jail for life … I didn’t want my family to do.”
Otto describes how he was measuring sheets to see if he could hang himself, although he does not use that word himself. “Fortunately it did not happen in the end, but I was so deep. I was done with it.”
When Otto is fascinated and with a bag is drained over his head, his son sits upright in his bed, surrounded by men with heavy weapons
Violent arrest
The way Otto was arrested also has consequences for one of his children. The child is six when the police ram the front door of the Klaas Otto home with an army vehicle from the Sponning on an early morning.
When Otto is fascinated that morning and is drained with a bag over his head, his son sits upright in his bed, surrounded by men with heavy weapons. All in all, it takes less than fifteen minutes, but Otto’s son is struggling with a trauma for years.
“He walked with a psychologist for two years,” Otto tells therapist Meta Herman de Groot. Her podcast series is about attachment between parents and children and according to her, according to her, has great impact. Just like the fact that Otto has spent a long time in detention in the last ten years.
How do you get the time that you have not been able to spend with your children again? Meta Herman de Groot advises Otto to tell many stories to his children, about the past and about the time he was stuck: that helps to attach again. “I should try that,” says Otto.
Back of the hard approach
Criminal lawyer Sanne Schuurman, who has assisted Otto for years, wonders aloud in the podcast why there is no more attention for children of suspects and convicted criminals. “You can say that Dad should have made other choices, but what can a child with that? The consequences of arrest and detention are often considerable for them.”
According to Otto, his two oldest children suffer from the image of his person, even now that they are mature. When finding work or when searching for a partner. “I also understand that parents of a girl say” stay away with him. “They don’t know who I am and only know the stories from the media.”
According to Otto, his almost mature son has been diving away since that violent arrest when he sees a police car. According to Schuurman, that is illustrative of the consequences of fierce police action.
Schuurman: “What you often see is that children hate the state. One of the consequences is that children of prisoners show more often different behavior later in life and also fall more often in crime.”
Lawyer Schuurman believes that this is the back of a criminal climate in which it is only about the harsh approach to organized crime. “We have forgotten that people who commit a crime are also just people and only look at their criminal behaviors.”
You can talk about suicide for free, anonymous and 24/7 at the national helpline 113 suicide prevention. Telephone: 0800-0113. Or chat on www.113.nl