The Public Prosecution Service (OM) demands 14 years imprisonment and compulsory TBS for a 30-year-old man from Roosendaal for manslaughter of his 23-year-old girlfriend. “The suspect appears to have isolated her, psychologically manipulated her, and made her completely submissive to him through physical violence. Ultimately, she paid with her life,” said the public prosecutor.
The suspects sister contacted the police on the evening of July 27, 2024. She was worried about the life of her brothers girlfriend and their little son. An incident reportedly occurred in their home, and the girlfriend was said to be no longer alive. The man had told his mother this by phone. At that moment, the sister feared for the life of her 5-year-old nephew because her brother had threatened to kill him and himself if the police came to the door.
Half an hour later, the suspect entered the police station with his son. He confirmed that he had argued with his girlfriend and that she was no longer alive. The police went to the residence and found the severely battered body of the 23-year-old woman.
It quickly became clear that terrible things had happened in the suspects home with his family, where the victim and her son had to endure a lot of physical violence. The public prosecutor said: “It is heartbreaking and shocking to realize that the little boy was present during all that violence, including the fatal violence, and was also abused himself. He was lying next to his mother when she ultimately died as a result of that brutal violence.”
Intimate terrorism
Research shows that the relationship between the suspect and the victim once started lovingly but gradually changed into a situation with much and severe physical violence. The woman was injured multiple times. In her indictment, the public prosecutor did not mention femicide without reason, which concerns women killed by a man because they were women or victims of relational violence. “This case is not isolated. There is already a history of isolation, intimidation, psychological manipulation, control, and severe physical violence. We call this intimate terrorism.”
The victim lived an isolated life within her relationship with the suspect and had hardly any contact with others in the last months of her life. In the (dirty) apartment where she lived with the suspect and their son, no visitors ever came.
The woman was under the control of the man, who himself had no job and lived off the money the woman earned working at a call center. On the fatal evening, the two had an argument, and the woman was (as often) abused. The suspect left his injured girlfriend and their son behind and only discovered, according to his own statement, around 2 a.m. upon returning home that she was no longer alive.
Structural control
According to experts from the Pieter Baan Center (PBC), the suspect suffers from a severe narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder and may even meet the criteria of a psychopath. Based on the profile drawn up at the PBC, the public prosecutor concludes that the suspects behavior within the family must have been characterized by “structural control, dominance, psychological manipulation, isolation, and severe physical violence.”
