Low penalties in Dutch morals affair with 16-year-old girl – De Morgen

The court in the Dutch city of Maastricht has ordered twelve men today to prison terms ranging from six months, of which three were suspended, five months, three of which were suspended, and ten times a day unconditional cell plus community service for 120 to 240 hours due fornication by a then sixteen year old girl in Valkenburg, last year.

The court assumed that the suspects were not deliberately looking for sex with a minor. That makes it less of a reproach.

But the men have satisfied themselves sufficiently on whether the girl was of age, according to the court. Only rely on the sex ad specified age or what the girl about it asserts, is insufficient.

According to the court the defendants have the physical integrity of the girl seriously violated and caused her psychological damage.

Heaviest penalty

The heaviest punishment went to a former employee of a child welfare institution in Cadier en Keer. Which, according to court should know better. However, the court told him not appeal ban.

The Public Prosecutor (OM) had two weeks ago demanded prison sentences of five to twelve months. But the court finds that a too heavy penalty and sees more in community service. Legally, the court must impose a prison sentence, and therefore chose the court for a day cell plus community service.

In January, the loverboy thing in Dutch Limburg came to light. A 16-year-old girl was abused by possible eighty men. That happened in October 2014, including in a hotel in Valkenburg.

Loverboy

Last month, the loverboy girl, Armin A., was sentenced to two years in prison for human trafficking. He put the sixteen year until paid sex with dozens of men in the two Valkenburg hotels.

“He has made her completely dependent on him and manipulated,” said the court. He’s abuse of a teenage girl house had run away and thus himself “was in a very vulnerable position.”

The court sentenced A. also for the extraction of a minor to the legal authority of its parents . That the girl wanted to maybe even as the accused asserts, factually irrelevant. Minors are “in a sensitive stage of development of their life,” said the judge, and must therefore “be protected against sexually mature, more sophisticated people.”