Josef B. does not accept the sentence he received this afternoon from the court for deprivation of liberty of the six children who were hidden for years with their father on a farm in Ruinerwold. So says his lawyer Yehudi Moszkowicz.
The court sentenced B. today to three years in prison. The judges find that the 61-year-old Austrian has been an “indispensable link” in the system in which father Gerrit Jan van D. raised his six youngest children. They also find that he is guilty of deprivation of liberty from another Austrian. That man was hanged by his arms and legs in 2009 by B. and Van D. in a shed in Meppel and was then locked up in a pen for a long time.
Van D. saw himself as the new Messiah and believed in a new world for which he had to prepare his children. According to him, outside influences were bad. That is why he did not register the six with the registry office after their birth, they could never go to school and they remained hidden from the outside world for most of their lives.
B. saw himself as a disciple of Van D.’s faith and made agreements with him. The Austrian arranged and rented properties – not only in Ruinerwold, but also before that in Meppel and Overijssel – and also renovated them. He also did groceries and paid his income as a carpenter to the family of Van D. As a result, he was nicknamed ‘the handyman’ in the media.
Because the Ruinerwoldvader indoctrinated the children with his faith, they thought that the outside world was bad and they were not free to come and go as they pleased. According to the court, B. is partly to blame for this form of deprivation of liberty because he helped.
“We do not agree with the conviction, because we believe that Josef B. has not acted criminally,” said Yehudi Moszkowicz on behalf of his client. “So there’s no end to this case, unfortunately.” B. has admitted that he knew about the hidden children, but has also always maintained that he did nothing wrong.
Lawyer Corinne Jeekel finds it a pity that there will be an appeal. She assists the eldest four of the family’s nine children. “I would have liked to have seen this spared them,” said the victim lawyer from Zwolle.
The eldest three children fled the family before 2010, the year that Van D. left for Ruinerwold with the youngest children. They had been registered by their father after their birth and did go to school. This also meant that, according to their father, they often brought bad influences from outside into the family, which could be harmful to the youngest six. Van D. was also often convinced that there was a bad spirit in them. The children were then severely mistreated and separated from the rest of the family for months.
D. has always told them that they should never talk about their hidden brothers and sisters, partly because then he would go to prison and it would end badly for the rest of the family. Because of that fear, the three were silent for years. Only when the youngest children and their father were discovered in October 2019 did they tell the police about all the misery they had experienced.
The fact that their father does not have to appear in court, because the court deems him incapable of doing so due to the consequences of a stroke, hit the eldest three and their younger brother Israel hard. He is the oldest of the youngest six children and the one who ran away in October 2019 and called the police.