John van den Heuvel maintains that there are more victims of Marco Borsato. Why don’t we hear about that? “These girls and women have dropped out,” claims the crime journalist.
It is a thorn in the side of Marco Borsato and his defense team: the breathy way in which Telegraaf journalist John van den Heuvel reports on his fornication case. The crime journalist had been in contact with Marco’s alleged victim A. for some time, explained to her well how to report the crime and is said to have more or less sent her.
More victims
According to Marco’s lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops, Nathalie T., A.’s mother, was working on a media plan against the singer long before her daughter’s report. “Only when she was led to believe that Borsato would have caused more victims did she come to terms with it,” he said in court. “There were no other girls at all.”
Who would have put A. into that delusion? John. Shortly after A.’s report, he immediately said on radio and television that he expected more reports: “We have actually done research in recent weeks and months and have also investigated stories in the rumor sphere of other victims. There is also contact with that.”
Counter-declaration
Marco eventually filed a counter-report, namely a false report. John shouted at the time that this was intended to deter those new cases. “I cannot rule out that there is a certain defense interest and that in this way an attempt is made to deter possible new victims from reporting the crime.”
Knoops now says that those ‘new victims’ were not there at all, and that John used this purely to encourage A. to report Marco.
Call
What exactly is this like? John says at the desk RTL Boulevard: “We have indeed made a call: are there more people who may have had bad experiences with Marco Borsato? So there has been a response.”
He concludes: “If Knoops had called me as a witness, I could have told him that too. There have been reactions to that and exactly for the reason that has now happened (according to him there is victim blaminged.), these girls and women have dropped out.”