The victims of The Voice of Holland and prominent media figures such as Angela de Jong, Fons van Westerloo and Yvonne Coldeweijer are furious about the results of the Voice investigation. “Step down!”
After fourteen months it is there: the ‘independent’ report about the abuses of The Voice of Holland paid for by the programme’s producer, ITV. There are apologies, it is admitted that everything went wrong, it is promised to continue to support victims, but names, back numbers and consequences? They stay out.
Victims angry
There is anger on all sides. Sébas Diekstra, who represents six victims of The Voice as a lawyer, is disappointed. “It is especially striking that the truth about who knew what at what time is pushed into the thick fog. Of course it is clear whose interests are served by this,” he tweeted.
The victims want the responsible Dutch management team of producer ITV resigns, says Sébas to the ANP. “Various main characters around The Voice, who had knowledge of reports, remain completely unaffected. This is indigestible for clients, because other women could have been spared a lot of suffering.”
Clean up the street
Yvonne Coldeweijer is stunned. “The main purpose of the research is to provide transparency about who exactly knew what and, above all, at what time. The study only mentions ‘two periods’ without making it clear which years are involved. That way they get rid of it very easily.”
She denounces the lack of details. “Why isn’t this published? Is there an attempt here to hide the fact that the top of the Voice producer has known about these abuses for years? Are we still trying to sweep things under the rug here? I don’t call that proper research. Now, in fact, we still don’t know anything that matters.”
trash can
Angela de Jong thinks the report comes across as ‘a cold damage analysis for ITV and Talpa’, she writes in the AD. “Dozens of possible victims reported to Van Doorne and in the end only five were spoken to. Five! That says everything about the distrust that was attached to this research beforehand.”
She finds it scandalous that it is not reported ‘who exactly was aware of everything when’. With this, all the streets of the highest bosses are neatly swept clean. (…) The apologies offered to them in this report are of no use to these girls. Because this report can go straight into the trash.”
Zero names
The well-known TV director and former RTL 4 boss Bert van der Veer thinks it’s a travesty, he writes. “Anonymity is the enemy of truth-finding. The report of law firm Van Doorne on The Voice has 0 names. That is quite something.”
Fons van Westerloo, former CEO of RTL, speaks The Telegraph of ‘a legal mush of words, from which you don’t get much wiser’. “He didn’t know anything and sister didn’t know anything either, I read. If only we had known, they actually say. But they should have known. In your organization you should look down on the work floor.”
‘We knew nothing!’
Production company ITV emphatically emphasizes in a statement that the British head office knew nothing. “Had the complaints of inappropriate behavior been referred to ITV management in London, the response would have been different,” says Lisa Perrin of the international parent company.
Format developer Kirsten Jan van Nieuwenhuijzen in De Telegraaf: “But what matters is whether ITV Netherlands and John de Mol were aware. There is a great financial interest in emphasizing that those multiple reports did not reach the top. That makes De Mol responsible.”
John de Mol was responsible for The Voice until 2020; he sold his production house Talpa Media to ITV in 2015. The media billionaire has not yet commented on the research results.