Anita Witzier (62) revealed live on television that she too was a victim of an unsafe working atmosphere. “I was dumped by John de Mol Productions after my maternity leave.”
Lately it has been about nothing else: transgressive behavior and unsafe working environments in the Dutch media world. Anita Witzier now also reports as a victim. She tells in the Jeroen & Sophie last night that she was treated unfairly by John de Mol’s production company 32 years ago.
Anita ignored
What is Anita the victim of? “At one point I was one of the victims and I only realized that when that report came out. I was pregnant with my first – that was now 32 years ago – and I presented the Staatsloterijshow program on location together with Marc Klein Essink.”
Marc did the studio part, Anita the on-location part. “That was live, a very big show every week. I had to give birth and we had agreed that I would return to that place three weeks after the birth or so, so I will call after three weeks: ‘When are we going again?’, and so on. I was completely ignored at that moment.”
John as bogeyman
Who is the bogeyman? John de Mol. “It was then produced by John de Mol Producties, I raised the alarm there, I raised the alarm with Veronica, my direct manager, with HR and with the management. And no one ever answered me. That is a fairly unsafe situation.”
She concludes: “I find it incomprehensible and I didn’t know what to do. I thought: HR is there for me, as an employee, but if you get no response, then you think: then that’s the way it is, never mind. And through.”
Shelly also dumped
It is not the first time that a woman has been dumped at a John de Mol company during her maternity leave. It happened to Shelly Sterk in 2019. “Yes, that really hit me a bit raw,” she later said about it in Koffietijd. “You really don’t want that during such a period.”