Exactly a year ago, Sandra (30) from Nieuwediep was killed by her husband Marcel (44). The drama left deep marks in her family. Her mother, Marian Stoppelenburg, has since made her grief her mission: making people and authorities aware of the phenomenon of femicide. “I didn’t take time to mourn. I refused. I don’t let me break what he did,” she says.
Since that fifth May in 2024, Marian Stoppelenburg’s life has been revolved around her daughter in the memory, in the fight and in her mission. Yet it often feels unreal for her. “As if it’s not about me,” she says. She hardly mourn. “I didn’t have the power for it, or maybe I just didn’t want it. Because if I mourn, I admit. And I was determined not to become a victim of my son -in -law.”
She soon found that power, that fighting spirit, in the form of speaking and sharing. A few months after the murder, she was publicly on a stage for the first time, with a book presentation about femicide. “There was also talking about Sandra. I wanted to be there. And when I stood there, I felt my story hit people.” Since then she has been giving presentations throughout the country. Organizations such as the Public Prosecution Service, Veilig Thuis and probation service invite her. In her lectures, she interweaves her many years of experience as a communication trainer with the raw reality of what happened to her daughter.
The relationship between Sandra and Marcel started in 2019 and developed at lightning speed. Within a short time they lived together, married and became pregnant Sandra, while children did not fit in at all in her future. “She wanted to go into the hospitality industry, just set up her own wok restaurant. She was young, ambitious and independent,” her mother says. But according to her, Marcel could not handle that. “He could not tolerate her strength. That inequality, that eats for someone who wants control.”
There were plenty of signals for her environment, but Sandra shielded herself. In 2023, Marcel was still in prison for his wife’s assault, but Sandra insisted that it would “be fine again.” Marian: “She didn’t allow anyone. Not us, not her friends, not the police. That isolation is also such a typical sign. But if someone does not accept help, you can do so little. We have seen it happen, but stood powerless.”
After the murder, not only a mother remained broken, but also a child. Sandra’s four -day son lost both parents in one day: his mother was killed, his father then committed suicide. Marian Stoppelenburg promised her daughter that she would do everything to offer the boy a safe place. But she and her partner felt too old to raise him permanently. Since then he has come to stay in Roden once every two weeks, but lives with the mother of the perpetrator.
“That doesn’t feel right,” says Stoppelenburg. “Not because she would not be kind to him, but because it is not a neutral place. He will soon have to understand what happened. That is only possible in a place where no colored stories about his parents are told. That also applies to me. I can’t tell him anything positive about his father, as she can’t do about my daughter.” The hope is now aimed at a neutral foster family. Jeugdzorg will take a decision on May 22.
Stoppelenburg now knows everything about femicide. She reads, investigates and speaks with experts. Together with a Healthcare & Welfare teacher, she developed the project Dangerous love relationshipsin which she wants to teach young people, care providers and authorities how to recognize and discuss signals. “Had it saved Sandra? Maybe not. But if we had intervened collectively, with girlfriends, her brother, myself … then there might have been a chance.”
A year after the murder of her daughter, May 5 does not feel like a black memorial day for her. “Every morning I wake up with that nasty feeling. May 5 is no different than 10 April. The real blow came the day after. Then I felt relief. Not because I was happy, but because the fear was finally gone. I had felt it all the time. Sandra is gone from that hell. That’s the only comfort I have.” Her story hits many, and her mission is not nearly over yet, according to her conversation with RTV Noord.