Chanan, 32, lost her mother when she was 5 years old. Killed by her father. “It brought so much sadness to so many people. This should never be forgotten.”
Could the drama have been prevented? Did no one see it coming? Chanan wonders so often. She therefore inquired with friends of her parents about their relationship at the time. Or it was clear that things were going badly. “My mother was quite closed about the situation at home, I heard. But what if my mother had indicated that her relationship was bad and unsafe? It’s so distressing that she was walking around alone with that.”
Femicide
Chanan finds it difficult to talk about her intense life history. About her father, who killed her mother. About growing up without parents, together with her little brother Christian. Nevertheless, the intercourse teacher agrees to an interview. Because the story of her mother and father should never be forgotten.
“I lost my mother to a violent crime. What my father did, premeditated or on impulse, caused great sorrow. A father who is capable of killing his children’s mother… There really needs to be more attention to the issue of femicide.”
Angry as she is at her father, the pedagogue in Chanan comes up for a moment. “There are so many people with strange behavior in this world. It often goes wrong at a younger age. They often do not find suitable help, or are not open to it. That has to change. If my father had been treated for his problems, things might have turned out differently.”
Fire
Chanan remembers it well. How she and her brother, then still a toddler, were taken out of bed by their father Reinier that fatal night of 11 to 12 December 1996. “The house was on fire, we had to get out. We went through the roof. The neighbor stood on a ladder and tackled us. We were given fire-resistant blankets, because we had to pass the fire and it was quite hot.”
Her mother Gonda did not come out of the house that night, she was missing. The next day, Chanan learned that she had been found dead. ,,Everyone was sad.” And she herself? “I was so young, I didn’t realize it. It may sound crazy, but I got used to it, I didn’t know any better. Apparently you are so flexible as a child.” She chooses her words carefully, finds it visibly difficult to express her feelings.
Femicide Stories
Every eight days a woman in the Netherlands falls victim to femicide. The women were murdered by their (ex-) partner, usually because he can’t accept that the relationship is over. In a series of stories in the Leeuwarder Courant and Newspaper of the North in March and April, loved ones of victims of partner homicide, experts and other people involved will speak. We kicked off the series on International Women’s Day, March 8.
Gambling addiction
The blow became even greater when it became known that a crime might have been committed. Her mother was burned, but also had a hole in her head and a slit throat. Soon Chanan’s father came into the picture as a suspect. Reinier was addicted to gambling and had gambled away more than two hundred thousand euros in a short time; a large portion of the proceeds from their recently sold house.
The police thought that Reinier had killed his 30-year-old wife after an argument about his addiction. And that he had set fire to the rented house, where they temporarily lived, to cover up that crime. They arrested Reinier, but had to release him after two months due to lack of evidence.
Grandpa and Grandma
Since Reinier was unable to take care of his children, Gonda’s parents took care of Chanan and Christian. “That was not the preference of youth services because they had to deal with a great sadness, the loss of their daughter. But it went ahead and that was our great happiness,” says Chanan. She remembers seeing children from foster homes at foster care meetings. “They seemed to have it much harder. We lived with grandpa and grandma, didn’t have to go to another school and often saw my mother’s friends. People who loved you and were there for you. We belonged somewhere, that was our salvation.”
The children had no contact with their father during that period. He soon built a new life with a woman in Curaçao, with whom he had children. Chanan felt abandoned. Her father was not there for her and her little brother. “He walked around freely, while my mother was no longer there. That felt unfair. In front of my mother, and grandpa and grandma.”
Those grandparents, Christiaan and Hennie Drent, were convinced that their son-in-law had a hand in the death of their daughter. “But they never said a bad word about him,” says Chanan. “It was by no means certain that he would ever be convicted.”
Peter R. de Vries
By the time Chanan was a teenager, crime reporter Peter R. de Vries covered the unsolved murder case several times in his television programs. He portrayed Reinier as a lying man of dubious stature. Chanan got it all. She sat in front of the TV with her grandparents, as well as so many others.
,,Very hard. Out of self-protection, I tried not to let everything come in hard. I especially saw the hard life of grandpa and grandma, how much grief they had. And how they did their best for Christian and me. For them I thought it was all much worse. I put it away for myself. Later I found out that it was not so convenient.
Manslaughter
After the house fire in Hoogezand in 1996, the charred body of Gonda Drent (30) is found. Due to her injuries, the police consider a crime. According to the police, Gonda’s husband, Reinier S., killed his wife after an argument about his gambling behavior. He then crossed the house on fire to erase traces. Reinier says it was a robbery, that he was not at home and only discovered the fire when he got home. After two months in custody, he is released due to lack of evidence. The case reopened in 2003. Thanks in part to a new one report from the Netherlands Forensic Institute and new experts Reinier is still charged with murder. The Groningen court sentences him to 12 years in prison for manslaughter. Reinier appeals. In 2009, the Court of Appeal in Leeuwarden sentenced him to 15 years in prison for manslaughter of his wife.
“Daddy, speak the truth”
In 2003, a Cold Case Team launched a new investigation into Gonda’s death. The detectives came up with new evidence against Reinier. He was charged and sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2008. But he appealed. The 16-year-old Chanan was there when her father was in the dock at the Court of Appeal in Leeuwarden. She called on him to finally admit that he had killed her mother. “Dad, speak the truth for once,” she said. Her father continued to deny, but was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the manslaughter of Chanan’s mother.
Feeling of insecurity
The conviction brought some peace. Chanan tried to ‘park’ the heavy business, moved into rooms and went to teacher training college. It actually went pretty well, it seemed. But the peace was relative. Chanan was always ‘on’. Her brain was overactive. She was reserved and always had a sense of insecurity. Didn’t know who she could or couldn’t trust. “The tension and the trauma had settled in my body.”
Her father, with whom she still had no contact, was released when Chanan was 26. “That was tough. He had only served ten years. That’s pretty short. At that time there was still a penalty discount.”
To dream
After the death of her grandparents – grandfather at the end of 2017, grandmother more than a year and a half later – Chanan had a hard time. “They were everything to me. That’s when I needed my mother more than ever.” She found the right help and felt strengthened by lovely people around her. She’s fine again. She is cheerful, feels quite stable. She has been living together for a year and enjoys her own horse. Her brother Christian, who is on a world trip with his girlfriend, is also doing well. Both Chanan and Christian have adopted the surname Drent, as a tribute to their mother.
Chanan dares to dream again, just like before. About her own house, with room for her horse. And about a happy family with children. But the latter always in the knowledge that she missed it so much herself. “Now that I’m older, I realize all the more what I missed and still miss. No parents when you move in, graduate and find a job. No parents to introduce your boyfriend to. A really great loss.”