The council chamber of Mechelen has not yet taken a decision this morning about referring Bart De Pauw to the criminal court. The decision will not be made until this afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Mechelen public prosecutor confirms.
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The case is about transgressive behavior by several women who participated in his productions. The lawyers of both parties met briefly this morning, but the hearing was adjourned after eleven minutes. Only after noon the council chamber will refer De Pauw or not.
Lieselot Claessens, spokeswoman for the Mechelen public prosecutor’s office, emphasizes that a decision on guilt or innocence will only be made at the trial. But she does believe there is enough evidence to warrant a referral.
It is generally expected that De Pauw will indeed be referred. The file against De Pauw contains hundreds of messages and statements of a dozen female victims. If the judge has to rule, De Pauw risks a prison sentence of up to two years.
De Pauw had previously indicated that neither he nor his lawyer would oppose a lawsuit. In 2018, De Pauw also pointed one mediation attempt that could have prevented a lawsuit. “For the first time I will be able to give context to all these allegations,” he said in May. “I will take my responsibility if it turns out that I have made a mistake somewhere, but I will defend myself to the utmost where there has been a lie, or where I have been wrongly portrayed in a bad light.”
Master Christine Mussche, who represents several civil parties, also announced earlier that she was ready for the trial. ‘The content of the criminal file speaks for itself’. However, she calls it ‘incomprehensible’ that De Pauw ‘is still talking about anonymous complaints, even though he has been informed of our identity for more than 2 years since the start of the judicial investigation.’
Video message
The investigation was started after De Pauw himself had reported in a video message in November 2017 that the VRT dismissed him for unacceptable behavior. In the video De Pauw shouted his innocence, but the VRT argued that several women had made ‘serious’ accusations. A few days later, De Pauw admits that his ‘flirty way of dealing with things is not enjoyed by everyone’.
De Pauw is said to have sent large quantities of explicit and sometimes downright vulgar text messages to women who participated in his productions for extended periods. In a few cases he would also have visited them. The public prosecutor’s office therefore decided to initiate an investigation.
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