Johnny de Mol vented his heart to Catherine Keyl just before he suddenly disappeared from the TV. He was really all over it: “I can’t take it anymore, it’s driving me crazy!”
He could no longer ignore it at the end of April: Johnny de Mol immediately stopped presenting his talk show HLF8. In addition to the report of aggravated assault and attempted manslaughter, there was also a woman who accused him of abuse. And that came on top of celebrities who suddenly no longer wanted to join him.
‘It makes me crazy!’
Catherine Keyl was there in the last episode of HLF8 with Johnny as the presenter. “In the end he didn’t leave HLF8 because of Shima, but because of an anonymous report. I thought that was very bad, because he didn’t know who had done that,” she tells de Weekend.
What did she say to Johnny? “I said to him: ‘You seem crazy, you shouldn’t stop, why would you do that for an anonymous report?’ But he said, “I can’t take it anymore, it’s driving me crazy.” I understood that. It was always bullshit, it would drive me crazy too.”
Credible
Catherine is criticized for continuing to support Johnny. She does not seem to take his alleged victims seriously. How credible does she actually find them? “I have no idea, I can’t say anything about it. I find it so very difficult. I don’t want to pass judgment on someone when I don’t know anything about it. That is my position.”
She continues: “I think far too many people have judgments and opinions about everything, while they don’t know anything. No, I don’t think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I find that too easy.”
“I care!”
Perhaps those ladies themselves are not pure on the bone, Catherine speculates. “I’m not saying this woman did anything wrong, but some women seem to seize the opportunity to have their way this way and I resent that.”
But what if Johnny really badly mistreated his ex-girlfriend Shima Kaes? “If he’s found guilty, it’s a different story, of course. But as long as everyone is guessing, what do I care? The whole world is full of gossip and assumptions, I’m not going to judge people for that.”
Nothing proven yet
Isn’t Catherine also aware that abuse cases often turn out in favor of perpetrators because of a lack of evidence? She seems to turn a blind eye to it all. “I just don’t like that when the judge decides he’s guilty.”
But why is Johnny still on the TV and the perks of The Voice not? “At least at The Voice it is the case that Jeroen Rietbergen has admitted that he was wrong and I think that already makes a huge difference. But again, I find it very difficult to judge this. I’m going from the facts and that is that nothing has been proven yet.”