In 2014, the Violent Offenses Compensation Fund deemed it sufficiently plausible that De Geus had been a victim of sexual abuse several times from the age of 4 to 14. She received a compensation of 15,000 euros on the basis of the so-called temporary arrangement. This scheme is intended to enable claims to be settled quickly and has a low-threshold character.
A year earlier, De Geus had also submitted an application via ‘the statute’, a scheme with stricter requirements than for the temporary scheme and which provides for higher allowances. In 2017, the compensation fund decided that De Geus was not entitled to compensation under this scheme because, according to the fund, it had not become plausible that an employee of the institution was aware of the abuse at the time.
De Geus then approached the National Ombudsman, who in 2019 called the claim fund’s argument “inimitable”. De Geus stated that same year the state is liable for wrongful conduct in her case. According to her, the state has not sufficiently protected her and allowed the sexual abuse to continue for years, even after she reported this to her guardian.
Nieuwsuur previously spoke with victims of abuse in youth care. They talk about it in the video below:
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