According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), a 29-year-old man from Emmen must serve an eight-month prison sentence for multiple assaults on his then partner in Emmen. The domestic violence happened from December 2022 to September 2023.
The public prosecutor also demanded a location and contact ban with the victim.
The 27-year-old woman filed a report in September. The man had moved in with her and her daughter the year before. According to the Public Prosecution Service, the woman has been continuously monitored by the man since then. He was possessive and jealous. The woman was abused at various times.
The woman indicated that she was tied up at her hands and feet, dragged over gravel tiles and thrown to the ground. There is an injury report showing that her report matches the injury. The man denies. The injuries were caused by rough sex, the man said. That seemed unbelievable to the public prosecutor.
According to the suspect, the life of his then partner is controlled by her parents. They pushed her to press charges, he says. “They are plotting against me,” the man said. The neighborhood investigation revealed that local residents were shocked several times by the suspect’s verbal abuse in the woman’s home. “It seemed like everything was being crushed,” they said.
Neighbors heard the woman being thrown to the ground in the garden and crying. “You bitch, in your legs,” the man allegedly shouted. The neighbors said they had seen injuries on the woman. The suspect was also charged with threatening the daughter’s father. He made shooting movements and shouted: “I shot at you, pam pam out of the window. A bullet to you, man.”
Those threats were recorded. He had no choice but to admit that: “It was recorded after all,” the man said to the judge. According to the public prosecutor, the complainant is afraid of the suspect, but on the other hand she still has feelings for him. “She is in a mental split. She wants nothing more than for things to turn out well,” the prosecutor said.
According to him, this explains why the woman sent the suspect’s lawyer an email in which she retracted her statements and visited him in prison. “The emails were at the request of the suspect to get out of prison,” the prosecutor said. The suspect did not want to be examined by a psychologist. “He appears to be suffering from disorders,” the prosecutor said. But that could not be determined.
The man was still on probation for a 90-day suspended prison sentence. At the end of December 2022, he was given a prison sentence of 205 days for attempted serious assault in Emmen, of which 90 days were conditional. He hit two men with broken bones in the face. The suspect is still on the waiting list to receive treatment. For that reason, the public prosecutor asked him not to serve the 90 days, but to extend the probation period.
According to the suspect’s lawyer, the reports from the complainant cast a completely different light on the case. The woman said something different each time and therefore her statement cannot be taken as evidence, she said. She argued for an acquittal for the assault and for the man to be convicted only for the threat. In her opinion, the sentence is far too high.
The judge will make a ruling in two weeks.