Bram Bakker was in Today Inside last night to get into the dust for betraying Javier Guzman, but no easy performance awaited him. “Get that book away from behind you!”
It’s a joke: former psychiatrist Bram Bakker went all out on his former patient Javier Guzman in an interview with De Telegraaf. He has portrayed him as a hopelessly lost addicted guy. Completely unethical of course, so the criticism was massive. Ronald Molendijk urged him to keep his ‘godforsaken mouth’ shut.
Critical Hélène
Bram Bakker participated yesterday on his own initiative Today Inside — he expected there ‘fairwill be treated – but will be shocked by the hostility. The world is still full of miracles: even Hélène Hendriks was critical. She agrees with Ronald Molendijk: “Yes, I agree, yes.”
What Bram has done is sickening, Hélène thinks. “I just think that if you have had a patient, you never, ever talk about it to anyone.”
‘I’m sorry’
What does Bram think? “Yes, you may think so, yes. I regret saying something, absolutely. That’s where it starts. Someone here has been very much a victim of something and that is Javier.”
He did not know that the telephone conversation with the Telegraaf journalist was an interview. “He then started saying: yes, I am so curious about what happened to that man. Well, I shouldn’t have said anything then, but then I started saying things that I know through the grapevine over the past few years.”
Shut up
Bram finds it awkward. “Not things from the time when I was his practitioner and which fell under my professional secrecy at the time, but I should have just kept my mouth shut. That is clear. I am sorry I said something.”
According to him, the quotes are not completely correct. “There are real errors in it. I called immediately and I didn’t hear anything. (…) That’s where my frustration lies. I didn’t even know that he came out of a conversation in which everything was discussed… He now says: ‘I am always first and foremost a journalist’, but that’s not how our relationship was.”
Book along
Wilfred Genee finds it doubtful that his new book is behind Bram. “I now also see that you brought your book, so you are actually also coming to promote your book at the same time. That makes it double, don’t you think so?”
Hélène fierce: “Bram, very honest: I don’t understand that either. If I were you now, I would have thrown away the book, because that is not where the attention and focus is at all.”
Wilfred: “I saw it just before the broadcast. I thought: eh, a book?”
‘Who did this?’
Hélène is on the warpath. “Did you set it up that way or did we do that?”
Bram: “That was done in consultation with the editors.”
Hélène: “Then I would just remove it immediately, because that undermines your entire story, because now it seems as if you are sitting there for your book.”
Bram: “Yes, but it is not the case that I decide here on what conditions and whether that book should be shown.”
Wilfred concludes: “Exactly what Hélène says: you come here to tell your story and to apologize. (…) That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
