“How can you forgive what is unforgivable?” The biological mother of the ‘Vlaardingen foster girl’ was “finally” allowed to speak directly to Daisy and John in court on Friday, the couple who had both her daughters in their home as foster children and neglected, abused and chained them up. The eldest in particular, now eleven years old, was seriously injured.
“The people who did this now sleep in a cell on a bed. In a room with walls without fear of electricity, pain and torture,” the mother says about the couple. “But my little girl was locked in an electric cage. She deserved safety, love and warmth. But she was tortured, hungry and cold.” As a mother, you would want to demand “revenge” for such misdeeds, yet she asks for “justice”; a punishment that ensures that “you monsters” never come into contact with children again and that does justice to what was done to her children.
“You have destroyed the lives of my children. Their future is no longer what it should be. And all because you hate people of color.” Then, shortly before the mother leaves the room crying, one last cry from the heart. “I wish you the worst of the worst.”
‘Unique in its gruesomeness’
Shortly after the “impressive and intense words”, according to the judge, the Public Prosecution Service comes up with the demand in this case, which is “unique in its gruesomeness”: prison sentences of eleven years for both suspects, plus TBS with compulsory treatment, and a five-year contact ban with the two foster girls, and two Syrian brothers who had previously been taken in by the couple, and who, according to the Public Prosecution Service, had also been victims of abuse such as hitting and kicking. humiliation and deprivation of food.
Public prosecutor Reinier van Loon called the hitting, kicking and deprivation of liberty “extremely sad” and “hardly imaginable”. “Many people will think how on earth is this possible, how can you do this to young children.” The answer: that the children were not regarded as people but as things, as if they were “an object.” As the texts about the children between the couple show: ‘It just screams’.
According to the public prosecutor, the “highlight of the dehumanization” was the treatment of the ten-year-old girl, who suffered the “disastrous consequences” for the rest of her life: she could never function independently again. The Public Prosecution Service speaks of “child torture”.
The foster parents themselves downplay the facts and say they are also puzzled. Foster mother Daisy places the blame mainly on her husband: “If I had been alone with the children, that cage would never have been created and we would not have been here.” She should have intervened, she should have warned others. “I did not intervene. I take responsibility for that. I deserve punishment for that.”
But why? She doesn’t get much further than wanting to keep her husband “satisfied”. According to experts from the Pieter Baan Center, she has a “manipulative survival strategy” and suffers from a “severe and complex personality disorder” with traits of “distrust, egocentrism and lack of empathy.”
‘I feel guilty’
Foster father John also says he does not understand himself well. Experts from the Pieter Baan Center explain to the court how it must have gone: that foster mother Daisy wanted to be a good mother, that this did not work out, that she felt powerless in raising her. That she then called for help from her husband John and that, in his desire to save his wife, whom he was “fond of” according to a psychiatrist, he harshly called their foster children into order and, if that did not work, punished them.
According to him, it was not out of anger that he locked the girl, initially on a string, later on a chain, in a cage. John: “I am ashamed of what I did. I feel guilty, with my whole body, for what I did to her, I deserve punishment.”
The foster father repeatedly states that he has acted in situations that would never have occurred if youth care workers and foster care organizations had responded earlier, and if the girl had not been expelled from school, as a result of which she ended up staying at home all day. But: “I don’t understand why I crossed a line, why I started punishing her more and more severely. I would like to know why I did that.”
According to the Pieter Baan Center, John can appear “compelling”, he has a need for “control”, and he also suffers from a personality disorder, in particular an “aggression disorder” in which he has a “need for power” when exercising aggression.
Also read
Foster parents of the severely abused Vlaardingen girl saw her as an enemy. ‘And I thought: you can’t get me under it’
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.