It is quite right that attention is now being paid to the impact of threats on loved ones, says Mischa Huijsmans (29). “It just does something to you. Just having people come to your house goes way, way too far. Even if nothing else ‘happens’.”
Huijsmans is the son of the virologist Marion Koopmans, who was severely threatened in corona times, and responds to the fragment from the TV program College Tour in which the daughters of Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance, D66) express their concern about her safety. “I totally understand what they are saying. If someone had been at our door with a torch, I might also have wished my mother had stopped. In any case, the conversation about this would have gone differently.”
The number of reports of threats against politicians doubled last year, the Public Prosecution Service announced last week. In 2021, the Threatened Politicians Team received 588 reports, compared to 1,125 last year. According to the Public Prosecution Service, 889 cases involved a possible criminal threat. Mayors, judges, lawyers, prosecutors and journalists are also threatened. What does this harassment mean for their relatives?
Angry farmers in the driveway
Those relatives rarely come out. The father of Minister Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen, VVD) told in an earlier episode of College Tour that his grandchildren were “scared after all” after angry farmers stood in his daughter’s driveway. “I had trouble with that.” Van der Wal reacted slightly surprised in the broadcast. “I didn’t know it affected my father like that.”
Mischa Huijsmans and his mother wrote a book about the corona time, in which the threats are discussed. But he doesn’t want to go into too much detail about what it means to him. “The goal of those threateners seems to be precisely to bother family, to create uncertainty. Then you don’t want to show how they do and don’t achieve that.”
Caring for someone you love is just one of the effects that threats have on loved ones, says emeritus professor of psychiatry Berthold Gersons. For many years he advised national terrorism coordinator NCTV on personal security. “You get into a heightened state of alertness that isn’t there otherwise. ‘Oh, the phone rings, nothing must have happened, can it?’ Neighbors are concerned that an attack will also affect them, family is afraid to visit. It is an oil slick that disrupts daily life enormously.”
Minister Kaag said in a response on Friday that one of her sons does not want her to come to his house as long as she is a minister.
People react differently to threats, says Gersons, and that partly determines the effect on their loved ones. “Some people push the fear away. It is alienating for the environment if the person themselves shows no fear while they themselves are extremely worried. Another reaction could be: ‘I’m not going to budge’, which you now hear many ministers say. The environment can also have a hard time with that. Who can think: ‘Isn’t it time to stop?’”
Always check the front door
Clinical psychologist Liesbeth Renckens of the ARQ National Psychotrauma Center counsels people who are under threat. The institute is working on a brochure for children of threatened persons. The effect on children strongly depends on their age, says Renckens, and on how threatened their parents are. “A parent who says: you can go wherever you want is different for a child than a parent who always checks the front door and the watch is full of tracking systems. It can become very protective.”
Daughter Sarah of Minister Hugo de Jonge (now Housing, then ‘corona minister’, CDA) told at the end of 2020 as a thirteen-year-old in the Youth News that she sometimes received messages such as “watch out for your father, he is dangerous”. “Or pictures that my father has been transformed into Hitler.” She said she didn’t care much about it. “Those who say that don’t really know my father.” Something else were the threatening letters that sometimes fell on the bus. “Then you think: okay, so they also know where we live.”
It can be difficult for adult relatives that they receive little information about the threats – because the threatened person does not have it either, or is not allowed to share it. “If you have no idea where a threat comes from and how serious it is, it gives you a very unsafe feeling,” says Gersons. Renckens: “People can get images of what could happen, such as the daughters of Kaag say that their mother could be killed. If those images impose themselves, you can get nightmares, become hyperalert or anxious.” Close relatives can demand that they always know where the threatened person is. They can become suspicious because they no longer know who they can and cannot trust.
No train travel or Oerol
Spouse Ad Huijsmans of Marion Koopmans is not active on social media. He mainly heard the online hate through his wife. “It is incomprehensible that the person you love and who is so committed is treated so incredibly rudely,” he says. There were also practical consequences. Security guards advised against train travel for the couple. Last year a planned visit to Oerol could not take place because there was no security. “If Marion was somewhere and it became later, because of an after-drink, then I was looking at the clock,” says Huijsmans. “Not that I immediately went to call the police, but it still gave an uncanny feeling.”
They were generally treated kindly on the street, he says. Except for the time they took a walk on the Mookerheide, in the middle of the corona period, and people suddenly started pointing at Koopmans. “They shouted that everyone was locked up because of her.” What did that do to him? “I got very angry. internally.” Something similar happened at a gas station.
Has it changed his view of humanity? “No, I am happy in life. There are always people who are triggered by the interest someone gets. Then ‘bag filler’ or ‘deceiver’ has to be added. Then we’ll have a glass of wine and talk about it. We are down-to-earth people.”
Son Mischa Huijsmans saw a lot on social media. “My mother was a ‘traitor’, a ‘global criminal’. I’m in favor of playing it safe. You don’t know what people believe. In Belgium, someone with a rocket launcher is behind [de Belgische viroloog] Marc van Ranst.”
But no, he says, he hasn’t started looking at people differently either. “I was already quite cynical.” He only lost “the illusion that the Netherlands is more tolerant than America or the United Kingdom”. “In the Netherlands anything could be said. Yes, but then there will be a man with a torch at your door. Then it is not too bad with that tolerance.”
Although the impact of a threat is great, according to psychologist Renckens, it is not the case that families who are affected by it necessarily end up with an unlivable existence. “Threats and security often persist. Then you see a kind of habituation occur. It can be difficult that this is not the same for everyone. Sometimes the threatened person thinks: I can live with this, while the partner remains fearful and controlling.”
Read also this interview with Marion Koopmans and her son Mischa Huijsmans