Noa Vahle, Linda de Mol’s daughter, believes her mother has been destroyed in the aftermath of the Voice scandal. “People shouted that she could no longer be on television!”
Linda de Mol is clearly not a perpetrator in the Voice scandal, but she does have a love affair with a suspect: Jeroen Rietbergen, the former band leader of the talent show who is being prosecuted for rape. Opinions are divided about whether you should want to stay with such a person, but that is of course up to Linda herself.
Outstanding questions
It is true that a number of questions have been open about Linda’s own role in the scandal for almost two years and, according to Luuk Ikink, these should be answered in an independent interview. For example, Jeroen shouted that he had confessed to Linda at least one misconduct on The Voice years ago, but she only denied it eight (!) months later.
That sudden turn has caused a lot of distrust. At the same time, Linda had known for some time about the alleged rapes by Ali B. She did nothing about it within Talpa, according to her own request at the request of the alleged victims. And on top of that, Linda was caught with an awkward slip of the tongue in her column.
‘She is destroyed’
As a senior woman with decades of media experience, you can of course be held accountable, but you can also remain silent. Linda opted for the latter and there was a lot of criticism for that. Unjustified, says her daughter Noa Vahle. “The worst thing for me is what it did to my mother. She is really devastated,” she says.
Noa continues in one of her mother’s magazines, namely LINDA.meiden: “People shouted that she could no longer be on television, that she should have done something about it. While this happened to her, she had nothing to do with this at all.”
Strong woman
It affected Linda deeply, according to Noa. “My mother is a strong woman, nothing could touch her. I was dreading that, but now the roles were suddenly reversed. I was home a lot and called her more often. Maybe that’s why I didn’t really get around to my own sadness for a long time. While I also had to process things.”
How did Noa herself deal with it? “The ground disappears under your feet when you hear something like that. We had just returned from holiday and had toasted the new year together. Everything was good and nice, and suddenly everything was terrible.”
Canceled date
Noa’s stepfather Jeroen Rietbergen has often been called ‘Dirty Jeroentje’ by her own colleagues at VI. What does Noa think of him now? “After a while you have to move on. I’m angry, sad and disappointed, but I also haven’t just forgotten who he was to me, all the good things he did. And he has worked a lot on himself.”
She concludes: “I believe that people deserve a second chance. You just can’t just say: ‘Okay, now we’re all going back to normal.’ Something like that takes time.”