Murder suspect also accused of sexually abusing 9-year-old boy Gino: report

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) is also charging Donny M. with sexually abusing 9-year-old Gino van der Straeten, sources told De Limburger. He was already charged with abducting and murdering the boy, as well as the possession and distribution of child pornography.

The 22-year-old man from Geleen will appear in court on Wednesday for the first pro-forma hearing of his trial.

According to the newspaper’s sources, the OM believes that M. sexually assaulted and murdered Gino on the same day he abducted him.

“Questions have been answered that the relatives have been waiting for a long time, but for which they actually did not want to hear the answers,” the family’s lawyer Floor Oehlen said to De Limburger. She would not say anything further. “We will do that on Wednesday after the hearing.”

Gino disappeared on June 1 while playing in a park near his sister’s house in Kerkrade. The police issued an Amber Alert, and officers, family, and volunteers spent days searching for the boy.

Early on June 4, the police arrested Donny M. They found Gino’s body near M.’s house in Geleen after the man told the police where to look. M. confessed to abducting and killing the child.

Today’s hearing in the court of Maastricht is a pro-forma hearing. The case will not be discussed in substance. The hearing is to extend M.’s pre-trial custody.

Before the trial can start in substance, experts must examine M.’s mental state in the Pieter Baan Center. The results of that examination may take a while yet, according to NU.nl.

In 2017, the then 17-year-old M. was convicted of threatening and assaulting two minor boys and sexually abusing at least one of them. For these criminal offenses, the court sentenced him in 2017 to almost five months in juvenile detention and clinical treatment. A collaboration of four government inspectorates is investigating whether M. received “appropriate guidance, support, and care.”