The Public Prosecution Service has demanded 38 months in prison against a 54-year-old man from Assen, 8 of which conditionally because he allegedly abused his stepdaughter in 2021.
The suspect denies, but appearances are against it. His (then) girlfriend caught the man leaning on the bed of the then 15-year-old girl at night in April 2021 with his head and hands under the covers. The child lay naked in bed.
The suspect explains the remarkable situation as follows: “I had to pee at night. I saw that a light was on in the kitchen and that she was walking to her bedroom. I also went to her bedroom and asked her what was wrong, she was lying in bed. We got talking. I knelt down next to her, just so we could talk on an equal footing,” he said.
In her own words, the stepdaughter rubbed her legs under blankets because she had shaved them and it felt good. “She asked if I wanted to feel. I did. That’s in my nature as a hugger. And suddenly she put the blanket over my head. I froze for a few seconds. And then suddenly my girlfriend was in the room.”
According to the girl, the lewd acts that the Assenaar is accused of started when she was 14. She kept her mouth shut for a long time, the victim’s lawyer explains, because she didn’t want to disturb her mother’s happiness. The mother’s relationship with the girl’s biological father was very difficult.
The mother initially did not believe her daughter. The girl had been in treatment for a while at the youth mental health institution Accare, where she told after ten appointments that she was being abused at home. Her therapist called the police.
According to the suspect’s lawyer, the victim has a habit of lying and manipulation. Others allegedly stated that the victim wanted her stepfather out of the house. And then there is the mother who initially did not believe the abuse story. “It is possible that the mother had good reasons to doubt her daughter’s story.”
The public prosecutor finds the girl’s statement reliable and sees sufficient supporting evidence. For example, a boyfriend and girlfriend were already aware of the abuse before the suspect was caught with a blanket over his head. The girl had also indicated to Accare that there had been abuse, a few months before that specific incident, without pointing to her stepfather, incidentally.
The judge will rule in two weeks.