‘For victims of The Voice, the threshold to report misconduct was too high’

Also read the TV review: John de Mol just has no idea

Since Saturday it has been known that there was sexually transgressive behavior with keyboardist and The Voice band leader Jeroen Rietbergen. He was reported on Tuesday for unwanted groping of a participant in 2018. New were the allegations against an unnamed director, who would have made inappropriate sexual remarks and assaulted on the set of The Voice. He would also have brushed aside the then 18-year-old’s story about her sexual contact with Ali B. He does not recognize himself in this image, he says in a reaction to BOOS.

Nothing noticed

De Mol says he warned Rietbergen in April 2019, after his sister Linda’s then partner acknowledged that a complaint about inappropriate WhatsApp contact was well-founded. De Mol said he had become furious and then said that Rietbergen would be watched. De Mol was also involved as a producer after the sale of the format to ITV (2015). He was in the studios “90 percent of the time” but had not noticed anything except the single report about Rietbergen, who is now accused of sexually transgressive behavior by nineteen women. As far as Borsato is concerned, De Mol has “difficult to believe that Marco would have children. I just can’t imagine it.”

The lawyer Richard Korver, who specializes in sex crimes, often heard John de Mol say that victims could have come forward. “That threshold is too high. In the broadcast, victims only dared to tell their story anonymously, with a voice changer, and only in the knowledge that they are not alone”. A ‘social problem’ is that ‘in the Netherlands we do not know how to deal with victims of sexual abuse. And also not used to addressing people about inappropriate behavior.” The statements made “firm allegations” according to Korver. He did find it “remarkable” that Hofman states to De Mol that he “knows” that the facts occurred. “It’s about believing your sources, but you can’t know. The people who are now accused must be given the opportunity to defend themselves in legal proceedings.”