The trial against Marco Borsato is in full swing and the press present is stunned. Not so much about the singer’s alleged actions, but: “What did he even do in that family?”
Marco Borsato is suspected of groping a 15-year-old girl on her thighs, breasts and vagina, both above and under her clothing. He also allegedly let her touch his own genitals. The singer denies that this took place. “This didn’t happen. This is the biggest possible accusation you can make against me.”
Troubled family
Marco is very concerned about proving his innocence and that is why he explains very extensively in court. “You can take the wax figures out of the museum and melt them down, you can take my music off the radio, but this touches me to the core of who I am.”
The conscious victim A. is the daughter of Nathalie T., who was the chairman of Marco’s fan club for many years. During the trial it becomes clear that Marco had a very intense bond with this family that lost the father of the house to suicide. A picture is painted of a troubled family with loose sexual morals.
Lasciviousness
Marco states that mother Nathalie was showing off her daughter in a strange way. “Which mother makes recordings of her daughter having sex and sends it and says: ‘Look at this’? Mother made everything sexual. Mother put her on display, as it were. Mother who has that transgressive thing written on her forehead, almost, now accuses me.”
For example, when Marco went out to comfort her daughter after a break-up, her mother reportedly said with a wink on the stairs that she was lying naked on the bed. However, on a secretly recorded tape, Marco only confesses that he caressed the girl’s legs. And it was, he emphasizes. “There has been no other allegation than that.”
Twofold
How does the press view it? Telegraaf journalist Jordi Versteegden Heart of the Netherlands: “It is so twofold. On the one hand, Marco describes the atmosphere of sexual mores at that girl’s home and her mother, where it was very normal for sex to be discussed.”
“That it was normal that the girl would have said: ‘I’m going upstairs for a moment, because then I’m going to work with my boyfriend, if you know what I mean.’ At the same time, you’re talking about a grown man who hears that and doesn’t say anything and doesn’t pull himself away. You are also talking about the most popular artist in the Netherlands.”
PR disaster
Marco’s interference in this family is unwise at all, Jordi thinks. “He knows what this could mean for his image if it ever comes out that he functions in such a family. What was he doing there? I saw myself thinking that, but also the looks around me, people from the press who are behind Marco and his defense team.”
SBS 6 reporter Janine Schuinder agrees with that surprise. “That he has remained in a family with fairly loose sexual morals, that he has committed himself to continuing to pay attention to this and that he has not previously sounded the alarm or put the brakes on, saying: I should actually not want to have anything to do with this, or seek help for them.”
‘Absolute nonsense’
Marco should never have involved himself in that family, journalists believe, Janine says. “That is mainly the tendency that many journalists have. They don’t actually understand why Marco continued with this for so long.”
AD journalist Victor Schildkamp: “It strikes me that he tells an incredible amount about the sexual morality of the victim’s mother. At one point Marco said that his mother even sent recordings of her daughter having sex to him. I just received a text message from the mother saying that is absolutely nonsense.”
Sex house
In any case, it seems that unusual things were happening in the family. “It is striking how he constantly talks in great detail, as if he had ended up in some kind of sex house and he was tied to a cat like a cat and still managed to keep his hands to himself. I do wonder a bit: why is he telling all this?”
The judge read several statements from acquaintances of the complainant and Marco. They confirm the sexually free morality in the complainant’s family, according to Het Parool.
Fragment
Marco at the court: