After Stegeman heard from former employees that disabled residents were structurally tied up, pelted and beaten, he decided to investigate Aurora Borealis in Wedde in Groningen. On talk show Op1 he said on Friday that this is the most intense undercover case he has experienced in eighteen years.
This time Stegeman did not go out in disguise himself, but sent a colleague who managed to get in with an excuse about a sniffing internship. She captured horrifying things on camera. For example, she filmed how employees humiliated the residents. For example, a member of staff puts a laundry basket over the head and torso of a vulnerable man: ‘the prison’. ,,What does the world look like behind bars now?” A colleague looks on and agrees: ‘where you belong’.
The abuses remained under the radar for years: between 2007 and 2020, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate never checked. A permit for a small care farm is therefore not necessary. There would have been two reports to the inspectorate, but they cannot find these signals in the systems. However, Stegeman saw that the abuses are simply described in daily reports of employees. However, those reports were never viewed by the Inspectorate.
Due to the evidence that Stegeman collected and passed on to the police, the care farm now closed and the residents have been accommodated elsewhere. Six employees have been arrested. Stegeman’s images form part of the investigation and support the reports and witness statements, the police said earlier.
Viewers react with horror to the images from the SBS 6 program. “This can’t be true,” one writes. Another: ‘Good heavens, people really are beasts.. and the worst part is, these victims can never tell others what is being done to them’. A counselor in disabled care writes that ‘her heart was broken into a thousand pieces’ after seeing the images.
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2023-04-24 07:04:57
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