Danny de Munk was very emotional at the Shownieuws desk last night. The singer did not get the names of John van den Heuvel and Yvonne Coldeweijer over his lips there.
It is now over a year ago that Danny de Munk’s life changed completely. In April last year he ended up on Yvonne Coldeweijer’s juice channel, whose spies accused him of serious matters. His career came to an abrupt halt two months later in June when a woman reported him rape.
Crocodile tears
John van den Heuvel, the crime reporter for De Telegraaf, opened a strong attack on Danny. He ended up on the front page of the newspaper several times and the journalist seemed convinced of his guilt. Even when the charges against Danny were dropped, John did not rule out that he would still be prosecuted. And his TV cry? “Crocodile Tears!”
Danny is now slowly but surely being rehabilitated and RTL 4 is also embracing him again. Now he has a new single out and that’s why he was at the desk in the live broadcast of Shownieuws last night.
Cheek biting
Danny still looks like a broken man. He denounces his declarant’s lawyer who states that ‘this story only knows losers’. “I think my whole family has been victimized. We are clearly the losers, because the other party has remained anonymous to this day.”
He continues: “When I see this again, I have to bite the inside of my cheek again. Look, I’m with you now, so I have to get over it, but I’m not there yet. If something like this is done to you… I have to say: if you are really a victim of rape, then someone should also be punished for it.”
American
Danny still can’t believe what he’s gotten himself into. “It’s American, it’s new. I don’t know this. I also talked to Jenny about it: do you know anyone in our industry who has ever had a report of rape? I don’t know that one.”
When did he first know he was the hare? “That was then at a juice channel. That was… Yes, I don’t want…”, said the folk singer, who does not want to mention Yvonne Coldeweijer’s name.
He also cannot get the name of John van den Heuvel over his lips. He invariably refers to him as ‘a crime reporter’.
Blunder
John has made a big blunder by accidentally leaking the name of Danny’s reporter. “Because I didn’t know who it was about either, did I? Long story short, I came across a crime reporter who had sent an email after the name. It didn’t ring any bells for me. I think: who is that?!”
Only after a lot of searching did Danny ring a bell. “I came to Facebook and thought: damn, you were the one who recorded me at the time because we had kissed. I’ll admit that and I’ve never lied about it. That was recorded and that was stopped by an electronic noise that scared the hell out of both of us.”
Five days
This woman has been given a much too big stage by John, Danny thinks. “The next day it was very big in the largest newspaper in the Netherlands. On the front for five days. It’s so unreal when it says on the front page: ‘Danny de Munk is suspected of rape.’ I’m very human in that. The next day you hope it’s gone.”
Not so. “Then another day. One more day. It stood for five days… I kept track of everything! I still suffer from it from time to time. You sleep badly. I’m on a sleeping pill because I just can’t stomach that this happened. (…) That crime reporter threw that on the front page for five days.”
A person
John and Yvonne seem to bother him the most. “That week of that crime reporter, the biggest newspaper and the juice channel really took everything over me. I also hate to say, “The media played their part,” because that’s not entirely true. It’s some. A journalist is also one person.”
He concludes: “It’s not like you can challenge an entire editorial team. It is one person who makes the decision: we go in with a stretched leg with Danny de Munk. I had to accept that.”