Did you know that in every primary school class there are on average two children who are victims of sexual abuse? That’s bad, but it gets worse. In 85 percent of the cases, the perpetrator is a family member, such as Mandy’s grandfather. During the Renze talk show, she talks about her childhood, in which she was sexually abused by her ‘dear grandfather’, in response to the #durftezien campaign.
Mandy about sexual abuse on talk show Renze
Maybe you recognize it from the past. Your mother who warns about strangers on the street. “Don’t talk to strangers,” she would say. You never know how someone like that will react next. Maybe it’s a child molester! It now appears that perpetrators of child sexual abuse are often known to the family in 85 percent of cases, according to the Sexual Violence Center. Wait, what? Mandy Sleijpen, the director of the Wij zijn M foundation, can discuss this. She has set up a foundation to break the taboo surrounding sexual abuse. Something she also had to deal with as a child. From the age of eight to fourteen, she was sexually abused by her ‘dear grandfather’, she said on Wednesday evening on the Renze talk show. Fiercely!
Abused by ‘dear grandpa’
Mandy was sexually abused for six years by her grandfather, who was allowed to continue as normal. He was also her ‘dear grandfather’ at the time. No one knew about it because she kept it a secret for years. “At that time I was completely cut off from the whole world,” she tells presenter Renze Klamer. “It is a kind of web in which you are stuck with your perpetrator, so I am with my grandfather. He was also my ‘dear grandfather’, we had a very nice bond. I loved my grandfather very much.” This made it easy for him to talk things into her. So she didn’t say anything about everything because she was afraid of prison. Although she thought it would be an even worse idea if her ‘dear grandfather’ ended up in jail.
When Mandy’s mother knew about the sexual abuse, she said that she had already realized it. “My mother literally said: you wouldn’t dare think that about your own father,” Mandy says. “She had little signals.” And because of these small signals she knew immediately: it was my father, Mandy’s grandfather. “All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place,” says Mandy. Her mother noticed it, among other things, when she was changing Mandy’s clothes. At that moment, the grandfather looked a certain way, which made Mandy’s mother think: this doesn’t feel right. Mandy and her grandfather were also once almost caught by her mother because the garage door was not locked. “Before I knew it she was there and I had already changed,” she says. “And years later, when everything had come out, I told her. Like: Mom, you almost caught us.”
#daretosee
Now Mandy talks candidly about the sexual abuse on the talk show Renze, where she also talks about the #durftezien campaign. With this they hope to encourage people to ‘dare to see’. That is what is needed: you must have the courage to realize that a family member is committing sexual abuse. And that is certainly not easy, as you can see with Mandy’s mother. Meanwhile, the abused children, like Mandy at the time, dare not say anything. They feel ashamed, but often also want to protect the perpetrator. In addition, such a child usually also feels guilty. “The child thinks: it’s because of me, I did something wrong,” explains Iva Bicanic, director of the National Center for Sexual Violence.
That is why it is important that bystanders dare to see what is really happening. If you see something strange between a child and that one adult family member, dare to confront it. Or at least to realize that something wrong is happening here. “In fact, everyone is defensive about the subject. You don’t want to remember it, it is an uncomfortable reality,” says Iva. It is logical that people often think: that doesn’t happen in my world. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie. “Everyone knows someone who has experienced that or who has done that,” says Iva.
Painful to hear and see, but I can’t be on TV often enough to save other kids #renze Mandy could make a government mockery with her story 💪🏽
— Debs (@DebskenZ) December 13, 2023
