Threatening your ex, your ex-mother-in-law and your ex-sister-in-law with death and hitting and scratching your stepmother and pulling her hair out. The family life of Jelena Z. (33) from Roosendaal is not exactly running smoothly, as it turned out in the court in Breda on Wednesday.
Jelena came to court in a thick winter coat, which she kept on for the entire hearing. She couldn’t remember what happened last summer and said she was confused. She regularly interrupted the prosecutor or mumbled something unintelligible.
She did not recognize herself in the death threats. “A lot of people have my password from Facebook,” she stated. “So it could have been a lot of people who threatened my ex, my ex-mother-in-law and my ex-sister-in-law.”
There are no threats
Jelena played a bit of a fool for the rest of the session. She didn’t do it all, she insisted. But the threats don’t lie and the in-laws live in fear and want it to stop. Jelena has three children with her ex and they should grow up without worries and threats, the family hopes.
The crudest threats were written in bad Dutch on Facebook, such as this:
- “Go die, kill him, kill me. House from my children back
- (…) People just kill them. (…) Shoot them dead. I want my house and my children today.(…)
And so it went on, until accusations of sexual abuse. Jelena also got into a fight with her stepmother, who scratched her and pulled her hair out. “Everyone has a fight with their mother sometimes,” Jelena shrugged about the abuse. She can’t remember this either.
And that suits her well, the public prosecutor believed. She still remembers good things, but she no longer remembers the threats. Meanwhile, the distance between her and her three children has only increased recently. Especially since the ex has custody of the children and she no longer sees them.
Downhill since divorce
Things have not been going well with Jelena for years and since the divorce in 2021, things have gone completely downhill. She has a bipolar disorder and has been admitted regularly. But the public prosecutor does not see her as incompetent, despite medication, disorders and crisis measures.
Jelena’s lawyer pointed to that. Before September, he said, there was no normal word to be exchanged with Jelena. “She kept rambling and the police couldn’t interrogate her properly.”
Psychotic and confused
The judge ultimately had to make a decision. She also saw that Jelena was often psychotic and confused. Certainly, if she doesn’t take her meds, which happens regularly. “But without an expert report, we cannot determine that she did all this without knowing what she was doing,” she explained.
Yet Jelena was punished. For the two threats, she received two 50 hours of community service, of which 30 hours were conditional. And another 30 hours of community service for assaulting her stepmother. In addition, she is no longer allowed to visit her in-laws and must cooperate with treatment.