A good deed is never wasted. Josef B. wrote words to that effect on a piece of paper addressed to the psychiatrists who wanted to examine him in the Pieter Baan Center. He hardly spoke to them, but every now and then he picked up a pen.
The care, effort and love you invest in a person is never lost. Even if that person disappears from your life. The commitment has made yourself a more valuable person.
Also on the Monday of the lawsuit against the ‘handyman of Ruinerwold’ B. does not talk about what happened. He writes notes on yellow sticky notes to his lawyer, who sometimes reads something out.
B. (61) is suspected, among other things, of co-perpetrating the unlawful deprivation of liberty of nine now adult people, who were kept in their home during their childhood by their father, Gerrit Jan van D.. They lived according to strict rules that were based on a largely self-made belief that rejected influence from the outside world. The youngest six children were not allowed to go to school and were not registered with the municipality. The three oldest were registered and ran away years ago.
Van D., who was also suspected of abuse and maltreatment of his four eldest children, was not sentenced because he was unable to follow the trial due to a brain disorder he contracted in 2016. The trial against B., according to the children a “disciple” of Van D., is a last chance for criminal prosecution in this case.
B. wears a brown leather waistcoat over his green and white checked shirt. He has twins with a Japanese woman, whom he no longer sees and from whom he probably divorced because faith took over his life. Just like during the police interrogations, he shows no sign of guilt in court. Sometimes he shakes his head, waves his hands defensively.
“Would you like to say something, sir,” the court president asks.
“You don’t have to ask that five hundred times,” says B. angrily. “I already said no.”
Josef B. became associated with the Van D. family decades ago because of shared beliefs, which include the assumption that spirits can manifest themselves in the material world by entering the body of a human being. Van D. wanted to found a new Garden of Eden and B. assisted the family and did all kinds of odd jobs. In the Ruinerwold in Drenthe, where only the six youngest children lived, there were fences to prevent the outside world from watching.
Also read: Isolated Ruinerwold children lived ‘in fear of evil spirits’
The hearing was halted halfway through the day because lawyer Yehudi Moszkowicz retaliated against the court on behalf of his client B.. He thinks it is biased that Judge Depping told B. that he could not leave the house because he had no papers. “This is a part that has yet to be proven,” says Moszkowicz, “and she argues that he had no documents and then couldn’t just leave.”
The challenge chamber, which consists of three other judges hastily summoned, decided after investigation and hearing from the parties involved that the challenge request was unfounded.
Mental compulsion
During his speaking time, D’s son Shin tells about the place in B.’s woodworking shop, where he had to live in seclusion from his siblings for a long time. “I slept on a piece of cardboard and a sleeping bag. (…) Why did he [B.] the authorities not informed? (…) You learned how we were beaten and humiliated.”
Growing up with friendships was taken from us
Israel son of Gerrit Jan van D.
Son Israel, who visited a bar in Ruinerwold in 2019 and told about his situation at home, which started the case and the police raided, believes that there were countless moments when B. could have intervened. “Growing up with friendships was taken from us. How could I develop my own will, my own opinion and my own self?” Moments later: “It was psychological coercion that held us captive.”
The lawyer says in his plea that B. almost never saw most children and points to abuse that B. had to undergo himself. “He would have been beaten for ten minutes. There is talk of smashing a beer bottle on his head.” Moreover, the position of B. and his lawyer is that the children could leave whenever they wanted. “The fact that Israel went out is proof of that.”
The Public Prosecution Service demanded an unconditional prison sentence of four years. Verdict in two weeks.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 10, 2022