In the new documentary ‘Anne op de blisteren’, Eindhoven’s Anne van der Steen (34) searches for a boy she falsely accused as a child. In the Omroep Brabant television program VRIJDAG she tells how she wrongly pointed him out to the police as a child molester. “I hope I can apologize.”
Anne was seven years old when she was taken by a child molester in the Blixembosch district of Eindhoven, she says at FRIDAY. “It’s a bit of a ‘classic’ story. I was approached by a man in the park and asked: shall we become friends? I liked that and went along, with all the consequences that entailed.”
The child molester had not yet been found, until one day Anne’s sister thought she had seen him in the park. “I cycled there with my mother. Then I saw that boy, but he was sitting very high in a piece of playground equipment and was very far away. I said it was him. The police picked him up and I had to identify him behind a mirror. I remember thinking: I have to do this right and I just say that it is him.”
Yet she always had the feeling that something was wrong. “I always thought this was too coincidental, and my sister had no way of knowing who it was. A few years ago I requested the file from the police and then I knew for sure: that boy had nothing to do with it. Then the guilt came.”
She is determined to find the man through the documentary. “I hope he recognizes himself in this story. Hopefully there is room for an apology and I can have a conversation with him. Maybe it will solve something for him too.”
A composite drawing has been made of the man, who should now be around 40 years old. “But the only thing I know for sure is that that boy had dark curls at the time. So even if you don’t really look like him but you completely recognize yourself in this story, be sure to let me know.”
