A 45-year-old man from Nunspeet has been sentenced to one year in prison for sexually abusing his sister for a long time. The abuse began when the victim was 6 years old and the suspect 12.
The sentence is less than the one and a half years in prison that the Public Prosecution Service had demanded. This is because one of the offenses of which the man was suspected has expired.
The man abused his sister while the rest of the family went to church, reports Broadcasting Gelderland. The abuse would not have stopped until the victim was 17 years old and indicated that she was afraid of becoming pregnant with her brother.
Dominance
The Stentor writes that the abuse only came to light in 2018, when the victim was recovering from a brain tumor and told her story to her therapist. The suspect then confessed to the police, although the abuse had stopped before he turned 18, according to his own account.
The court blames him for having sexually abused the victim for a long time and frequently. “Due to the large age difference, the man had predominance over his sister, so she could not offer him any resistance. In addition, the man had no eye for his sister and what this meant to her,” the court writes.
Moreover, the abuse took place in the parental home, a place where she should have felt particularly safe. “The man seriously shamed the trust his sister was allowed to have in her big brother.”
Psychological consequences
During the hearing it turned out that his sister is still experiencing the psychological consequences of the abuse. “She lived for years in a harrowing solitude of the great secret and even the people she loves she can hardly trust,” the court said.
According to the court, a year in prison is an appropriate sentence, because the abuse took place more than 25 years ago. In addition, according to the court, there are no indications that there has been any transgressive behavior since then. The time that the suspect has been in pre-trial detention is deducted from the prison sentence.
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