© VRT, Olivier Matthys
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Tom Lenaerts responded for the first time to the verdict in the trial of ex-colleague and friend Bart De Pauw in the Canvas program ‘Only Elvis continues to exist’. He called it a
“tragic” and “sad” affair, in which it “should never have come to trial. Everyone involved has been humiliated in recent years.”
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De Pauw was sentenced two weeks ago to a six-month suspended prison sentence for stalking five women. When the television maker himself came out in 2017 with the news that women accused him of this, Lenaerts said it “hit like a bomb”.
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The two were inseparable for years on the small screen, including in the ratings cannon ‘Schalkse riders’, and they were also good friends. “You have known someone very well for 20 years. Or did you think so”, says Lenaerts. “When something like this happens, it’s tragic. It makes you sad. I can’t put any other feeling on it. Outside sad and sad.”
“Shouldn’t have gone to trial”
Lenaerts still has trouble talking about the case. “It’s all very sensitive, and anything you say can be interpreted or even used in so many ways (a piece from a newspaper interview about how “any sane person knows where the line is” was used in court, ed.).
COMMENTARY. “The De Pauw verdict is not a solution, but it is a start (+)
“While I have the feeling that it should never have come to a lawsuit,” says Lenaerts. “Everyone involved in that case has been humiliated in recent years. We must hope that something good will come out of this, that women will get up faster, but otherwise: misery, for four years, what a hell. And I hope it’s over. Because for the same money, it’s not over yet.”
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