Police investigated for handling child pornography find before murder of 9-year-old boy

An investigation is now underway into how the police handled the discovery the possession of child pornography on a mobile phone owned by Donny M. The discovery was made in 2021, well before the Geleen man was implicated in the abduction, drugging, sexual assault, and murder of 9-year-old Gino van der Straeten in June 2022.

The Justice and Security Inspectorate said on Tuesday that they started an exploratory investigation into the police department's actions after they found the child pornography on his phone. He was not immediately prosecuted for that crime. "In 2021, that discovery had no direct legal consequences for him, no investigation followed," the Inspectorate said. "Only after Donny M. was arrested in this case was the child pornography involved in the investigation against him," the Inspectorate said.

M. was previously convicted for violent crimes against children in 2017 when he was a 17-year-old himself. He was convicted of threatening and assaulting two boys, and of sexually abusing at least one of them in June of that year. One of them, a 7-year-old, told his mother he and a friend were abducted from a playground and beaten up. "His friend had to do things to Donny and the other way around. Donny did everything with that boy in a flat in Sittard," the victim's mother said. Donny M. was convicted and sentenced to about five months in juvenile detention, and mandatory clinical treatment.

Van der Straeten was reported missing by his older sister after he did not come home from a playground in Kerkrade where he was playing football on June 1. After days of searching, police narrowed their focus on Donny M., who allegedly told police where they could find the child. His body was discovered behind a burned-out house in Geleen. M. largely confessed to many of the crimes for which he was accused. Four different inspectorate services, including the Justice and Security Inspectorate, said they would jointly investigate the circumstances around M.'s care and monitoring.

Because of the larger study, the Justice and Security Inspectorate "recently received new information about the police's conduct," the Inspectorate said. This information means [the] Inspectorate wants to know how the police made their decisions and carried out their work after the discovery of the child pornography on the telephone."

A separate office could lead its own investigation into how the Public Prosecution Service handled the situation, which was responsible for leading the investigation.