Neigbourhood tries to chase paedophile out

The presence of convicted paedophiles has sown conflict in many Dutch communities.

“A paedophile lives in your street,” read an anonymous printed note dropped onto doormats along several Dutch streets on Sunday December 13. The paedophile’s name had been added by hand.

One of the streets was De Boeg, in Wijk bij Duurstede. At first, residents reacted with caution, curiosity and embarrassment. But a month later the mood has changed. Banners hang on house-fronts on one side of the street: "No paedophiles on the street". No banners hang on the other side. The residents are deeply divided. Some have stopped talking each other. The paedophile left his house for three weeks after the notes arrived, and returned under police escort last Friday. His curtains are shut and his lights are out, even at night.

All it takes is one person

The fault-line that runs through De Boeg also cuts across the entire society, says crowd psychologist Jaap van Ginneken. The anonymous note didn’t raise such turmoil in other places, but that says nothing. It doesn’t take much to escalate the situation, Ginneken warns. “Just one person who takes the initiative with a powerful, emotional story, who pushes others over the line.”

In De Boeg, there was such a person: Chris Hölsken.

On the day after the anonymous note arrived, residents rang the doorbell of the suspected paedophile. All they knew of him was that he had come to live there five years before and kept to himself. His wife answered the door and confirmed that he had indeed been convicted of the acts in question. But that was a long time ago, she said.

Esther Klomp, one of the residents, who had herself been abused as a child, didn’t leave it there. She read the small print under the anonymous note and found the name of a website stopkinderpornonu.org . It contained names and pictures of convicted and suspected paedophiles sent in by victims.

Enter the victim

One day later, the site’s developer, 27 year old Chris Hölsken, was sitting on Klomp’s sofa telling his own story to the street’s residents. As a pupil at a school for retarded children, he had been abused by the man who was now their neighbour, he said. He was one of twelve victims. “You hear a personal story like that and your feelings change,” Wendy Kuiper said. Nobody checked whether Hölskens story was true.

A day later, a neighbour rang Klomp’s doorbell. “Esther, you won’t believe it. Another one is also living here! A couple of streets away.” Accompanied by Hölsken, Klomp rang the doorbell of the second suspected paedophile. The man confirmed that he had been convicted of the sexual abuse of minors three years before.

The mayor of Wijk bij Duurstede organised meetings with the neighbourhood. Residents were informed that the paedophile at De Boeg had been convicted 14 years before, served his sentence, and was still voluntarily undergoing therapy. But peace didn’t return to De Boeg. “Are there other paedophiles living here?” asks Esther Klonk. “The mayor could not say.”

A witch hunt?

Chris Hölsken urged them to hold a protest march. The two paedophiles must leave the district, he said. They handed out flyers. “Some neighbours reviled us,” said Wendy Kuiper. “They called it a witch hunt.”

Fifty people attended the demonstration, then hung their banners on their houses – right across the street from the convicted paedophile. Meanwhile Chris Hölsken is planning to drop similar anonymous notes this month through letterboxes on 60 other Dutch streets.

Mayors are bracing themselves. Eindhoven’s mayor, Rob van Gijzel, says they have to protect their residents. “You have to prepare the parents of victims for the possibility that they might encounter the person who hurt their child. You can’t just hope the neighbourhood accepts someone like that.”

Many paedophiles molest again

He is concerned about Sytze van der V., who was convicted three times for abuse of young boys, but is now wandering around the country without any surveillance. Van der V. can move about the neighbourhoods where his victims lived, swimming in the pools where he formerly found victims. A paedophile who has served his sentence is only placed under surveillance if he agrees to it. Except when the judge decides that his chance of recidivism is so high that he can make surveillance a condition of release.

One third of paedophiles molest children again after serving their sentences, and the chance of their doing so is greater if they have no fixed place of abode, says Jan Hendriks, who treats convicted paedophiles at the forensic psychiatric clinic in The Hague. Released paedophiles must lead as normal a life as possible, with work, hobbies and friends. And also with help and guidance. But not all of them want guidance, Hendriks says. Some accept psychiatric treatment to get a lower sentence. But they actually find they have done nothing wrong.

"As long as I don’t use violence against children," they think, "I can be friends with them. And if something more develops, that’s because the child also wants it."