Thijs Römer has put aside lawyer Wikke Monster. He will start his appeal with a new counsel at his side: Ivonne Leenhouwers. “Was he not satisfied?”
It was a huge shock for Thijs Römer in the summer: he actually had to spend a month in prison for the online abuse of three underage girls. He himself finds that very strange. “It was more of a cheerful conversation about sex,” he said during the trial. “The psychologist said: you have become too much of a care provider in this story.”
Caregiver Thijs
Thijs did not abuse the girls, but helped them, he believes. According to him, ‘assistant’ is a really striking word. “I think that’s the word that fits best.”
And Thijs does not want to go to prison for providing help, so he has appealed. But he has hired a new lawyer for this: Wikke Monster has been exchanged for Ivonne Leenhouwers, reports Show news. “So that means that he is not satisfied with his previous lawyer?”, says Story boss Guido den Aantrekker.
‘Time for someone else’
Bram Moszkowicz doesn’t know what the reason is. “He may have parted ways with his lawyer for whatever reason or the other way around.”
Criminal lawyer Natacha Harlequin: “Or both. That you think: the click is no longer there, the trust is not there. Or that you think: with everything you have told me now, everything we have discussed together, it is time for someone else.”
One thing is certain: the change of lawyer comes after that huge blunder with that strange social worker argument.
Strategy
Natacha thinks that Thijs said this on the advice of his previous lawyer Wikke. “Her entire strategy and how she assists clients – she also writes about this, I have also attended one of her guest lectures – is: I don’t want my clients to take the judge’s turn, but to just really say what they feel and how they see it.”
Bram is surprised: “That would mean, Natacha… Because what did he say in court? That he was teaching the girls. But you can’t mean that, can you?”
Natacha: “Yes, and that he had a freer upbringing in Amsterdam.”
‘Don’t say it!’
That lawyer Wikke should really have discouraged Thijs from saying that, Bram thinks. “Assuming it were true, I would have advised him as a lawyer not to tell the truth and to say that he is sorry.”
Natacha: “That’s true. That’s true, I agree.”
Bram is said to have advised Thijs to express remorse and to give up alcohol and drug addiction. “If he had followed that advice, also because I think it is so, then I believe he would have stood up better in court.”