Father beat and sexually abused children to ward off ‘bad spirits’, prosecutors say
Court hears how children were kept in seclusion and suffered physical punishment by parent
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Your support makes all the difference.A father who is accused of holding six of his nine children captive for nearly a decade beat and sexually abused them as he claimed “bad spirits” would enter their bodies if they talked to outsiders, a court has heard.
Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, 67, has been charged with unlawful detention, child abuse and money laundering after police found his children at an isolated farmhouse in the north of the Netherlands.
Van Dorsten, who is now ailing from a stroke, cannot speak and did not attend the pre-trial hearing in Assen, Netherlands, during which his custody was extended by three months.
“All the children report physical punishment if they were deemed to be under the influence of sprits. This happened from a very young age, with children as young as four or five years old,” prosecutor Diana Roggen told judges.
The children’s reported punishment consisted of “beatings, sometimes with a stick or other objects, pulling of their hair, [and] sometimes making them sit in a cold bath for hours”.
At some points, children were “chocked to the point where they became unconscious”, prosecutors said.
Police discovered Van Dorsten and five adult children at a farm in October after a sixth child escaped and reach a nearby village bar, where local people alerted authorities.
The six youngest children were kept in seclusion since birth and had not had their births registered or been to school, as required by Dutch law.
Judges have granted a prosecution request for Van Dorsten to undergo neurological and psychiatric evaluations, and defence lawyers will be allowed to question the children - who are now all adults.
Van Dorsten is said to have told the children that the death of their mother in 2004 was their fault for having contact with the outside world.
“I had a bad spirit and I did not want to transfer it to them,” one of the children told prosecutors during questioning.
Prosecutors added that some of the older children said their father forced some of them to perform sex acts on him between 2004 and 2008.
Ms Roggen said Van Dorsten told the children “a female spirit, the spirit of their mother or another spiritual wife” had entered their bodies to justify sexual acts with them.
The allegations by the children were confirmed by diaries written by Van Dorsten seized during a search of the farmhouse, the prosecutor said.
The father is currently in a prison hospital where police have been unable to question him because an untreated stroke in 2014 rendered him unable to speak.
A second suspect, Austrian Josef Brunner, 58, a follower or accomplice of Van Dorsten who paid the rent on the farmhouse, is charged with endangering the health of others and unlawful detention.
The children have not spoken publicly on the case but have given statements through a Dutch filmmaker.
The four eldest said in November that they support the criminal case against their father.
Separately, the five youngest children - those found at the farm - have said they do not support the charges.
Additional reporting by Reuters