“I couldn’t be a normal child or teenager because of your actions. I was constantly in survival mode.” This is stated in the victim statement of the girl who first reported Gianni de W. (25) from Etten-Leur. The girl from North Holland was 15 years old when she was blackmailed by him. She sent him 9981 photos and 1072 videos under duress, it turned out in the court in Breda on Tuesday.
“I was contacted by you on the Internet at a vulnerable time in my life,” she stated. “It started innocently, but soon you had nasty intentions and asked for sexually explicit images of me. You took advantage of my ignorance and made me very scared with your threats.”
After a while, the girl blocked De W., but he continued to threaten to distribute her nude photos to friends and family via other social media and did so. The girl went to the police when her 14-year-old sister was also approached. De W. promised to stop if she made a sex tape for him with a friend. She agreed, after which De W. gave far-reaching instructions. However, he did not keep his promise to quit. The orders for new photos and videos kept coming.
“I was harassed 24/7 with messages and phone calls.”
The girl lived in constant fear and feared that the outside world would find out everything. “You didn’t leave me alone. I was harassed 24/7 with messages and phone calls. I had to keep this a secret all these years.” The victim receives psychological help. “I realize that I really behaved like a tyrant,” De W. responded to her statement.
Another girl had to send photos in her underwear for an account posing as a casting agency. Later, ‘Bryan’ made her kiss a friend in a bra. She did this to prevent images from circulating. “I hope you feel now as I have felt for so long,” she said in court.
The case of a girl who became a victim in two ways was poignant. Her ex-boyfriend had posted old photos and videos online of her at the age of 14 or 15 out of revenge. He also posted all her information. Gianni de W. fished that data out of a group on Telegram, where that kind of information is shared, and threatened her with it. He demanded more nude photos and videos or he would redistribute those old photos. Under pressure, she delivered 14 photos and 11 videos to Gianni de W..
“She still had braces and was only in the first.”
The youngest victim, this first day, was 12 when she met Gianni online. “She still had a brace and was only in the first,” the judge said in horror. “Didn’t you have a limit? Did you add everything on social media that was a girl?” Gianni nodded a bit and admitted that it came down to that. “I was often successful,” he confessed. “But there were also girls who immediately cut off contact.”
The 12-year-old girl first posed in a bra. Then a photo of her buttocks and finally a masturbation video. “I had a lot of trouble with it at home,” she said through her lawyer. “I always had to go to bed at a quarter past nine and had to leave my phone downstairs. But I didn’t dare, so I secretly took it with me.”
When the girl’s parents found nude photos on her phone, she had to delete Bryan immediately. In total, Gianni took 229 photos and 142 videos of her.
And so Gianni de W. used approximately the same method each time. He looked for girls via Snapchat and Instagram and had a nice chat. He soon offered them money for racy photos in lingerie. Once he had photos to blackmail the girls with, he threatened to send them to family and friends. The girls could only counter that by taking more and more far-reaching photos and videos. If they stopped cooperating, he would threaten again. What started with lingerie and nude photos went as far as masturbation videos and videos of sex with others.
The court dealt with eight of the thirty files on the first day of hearing on Tuesday. The file mainly consists of young girls. According to De W., he is not necessarily attracted to young girls, but they are simply easier prey. De W. has a form of autism and at the end of the hearing it turned out that he had also been abused in his youth.
The other cases will be dealt with on Wednesday and Thursday. The justice department will announce the sentence next week.