‘Handyman Ruinerwold’ Josef B. free | Inland

Experts expressed their surprise in De Telegraaf on Saturday at the long pre-trial detention of the man who provided the ‘ghost family’ with money and food. Certainly because B. seems to have only played a supporting role in the controversial Ruinerwold case. It revolves around the deprivation of liberty and mistreatment of several children by the main suspect, the paralyzed ‘patriarch’ Gerrit Jan van D.

Austrian Josef B. had no or only a limited role in the detention of the six children of Van D. The children themselves stated this. They believed they were not imprisoned at all. Justice, however, thinks that father Van D. exerted heavy religious pressure on them, which prevented them from leaving home for nine years.

Hunger strike

The handyman had gone on a hunger strike in prison in protest at his long custody. He didn’t eat a bite for weeks, now he had started eating again.

B. was not allowed to enter the farm in Ruinerwold for years. Gerrit Jan shielded his children there from any spiritual impurity and he included Josef B. there too. He brought money and provisions, but was not allowed to go beyond the fence. The kids only knew him from the security footage.

For that reason alone Josef thinks that the justice department cannot blame him. “I heard that one of the older children drove past the farm from time to time to see with binoculars how his younger brothers and sisters were doing inside. My position was actually comparable. It was not surprising that I was not allowed to have direct contact with the children even then. That was the way it was agreed. ”

‘Fine was enough’

The OM has greatly exaggerated the case, he says. “Do you know what they should have done? Take the family to the town hall, register them all and then settle it with a fine. But we were portrayed as a horror family, like Josef Fritzl. By bringing it out in such a big way, there is no going back. ”

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