A 17-year-old girl was cycling home during the night of August 17 to 18, 2023. She had been out during the KEI week, the introduction week for students in Groningen. It was a cycling trip of about 7 kilometers for her. After a few kilometers, she was pulled off her bike on the bike path at Driebondsweg by a man who jumped out of the bushes. She did not know him.
He first tried to take her phone. The man then threw her to the ground, hit her, and grabbed her wrists. He forced her into his car. The girl tried to escape but failed. He briefly squeezed her throat and forced her to perform multiple sexual acts, during which she was also blindfolded by the man. The girl eventually managed to cycle home completely distraught.
The person whom the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in Northern Netherlands holds responsible is a 26-year-old man from the municipality of Het Hogeland. The public prosecutor demands a prison sentence of eight years and TBS with compulsory treatment against this suspect.
Driebondsweg
The suspect initially strongly denies any involvement in the rape. Only after a DNA match points to him does he claim that he only wanted to rob the girl. The public prosecutor does not believe this statement.
Legally, she sees sufficient lawful and convincing evidence for a violent unlawful deprivation of liberty that served a rape.
After all, the victim gives a description of a man matching the suspect. She also describes his car. Furthermore, the public prosecutor concludes that she had physical injuries consistent with what happened to her. At the crime scene, tire tracks, footprints, and other traces in the grass were later found that fully support the victims statements.
Multiple suspicions
The man is not only charged with the rape in Groningen. The OM also suspects him of a rape a month earlier in Assen, on July 20, 2023. The public prosecutor considers it legally and convincingly proven that the suspect raped a woman at a parking lot after a Tinder date that day. She was then left there in the middle of the night. From a brief statement by the suspect, it appears he is unaware of any wrongdoing.
Additionally, the OM suspects the suspect of causing multiple young girls to perform sexual acts for a camera. “This while the parents of these girls thought their daughters were safe in their own homes.” Finally, he is also accused of theft of a phone and wallet.
TBS with compulsory treatment
The suspect was examined at the Pieter Baan Center. He refused all cooperation there. Experts do see a ‘worrying pattern towards women with a certain planned character.’ Based on the reports, the public prosecutor concludes there is an increased risk of recurrence, whereby the safety of other women in the future is at stake.
She also has serious concerns about the suspects double life. Notably, there is a contrast between the image she gets of him from the file and the image his girlfriend and her family have of him.
Because she does not want the suspect to return untreated to society at any time, she demands TBS with compulsory treatment, in addition to a long prison sentence.
Brave
A long prison sentence is certainly appropriate according to the public prosecutor, given the seriousness of the facts. “Furthermore, the suspect still puts his own interests first. (…) It is shocking to read the wiretap conversations with relatives in which he presents himself as the victim in this case.”
He is not the victim; those are the brave girls and women in this case who filed reports and testified. He did something to them that every woman fears and that parents and victims have nightmares about.
The court in Groningen will give its verdict in this case on December 17, 2025.
