Trial starts against man accused of sexually abusing 31 girls during sleepovers
Today, the trial starts against Mels van B. from Barendrecht. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) suspects him of sexually abusing, filming, and photographing 31 girls, mostly during sleepovers with his own children. The court set aside six days for the trial.
According to the OM, Van B. physically abused 18 girls and made child sex abuse images of the rest. He abused the children in his home in Barendrecht and in his caravan at a campsite in Noord-Brabant. He drugged some of the victims. The abuse came to light when a 10-year-old girl who was camping with Van B. and his children suddenly messaged her mom to come get her in 2024.
Nieuwsuur spoke to the girl’s parents. In the summer of 2024, their then 10-year-old daughter spent a few days with a friend in a caravan at a campsite. A day before they were set to return, the girl texted her mother that she wanted to go home. Her mother found it strange, but no reason for alarm. That is, until Van B. suddenly called her with a strange story.
“According to [Van B.], my daughter dreamed that night that he had taken off her underwear. He asked me if she often had such strange dreams,” the mother told Nieuwsuur. “I tried to react normally. But I immediately thought: something’s wrong.”
“I didn’t want to falsely accuse anyone. You mainly hope that nothing is wrong. We know each other well. Our daughters were on the same sports team for a year. She had even stayed there before,” the mother said.
After the phone call from Van B., she asked her husband to go pick up their daughter. She also called the police.
“It was an hour’s drive to that campsite. I managed to squeeze in an awkward conversation at the caravan,” the father told Nieuwsuur. “My daughter was sitting alone, hunched over. She wanted to go home as quickly as possible.”
On the drive home, she texted her mother what she remembered from the night before. She woke up with her underwear around her ankles and Van B. sitting on the edge of her bed. “She was shaking with fear. She was thirsty. When the man got a glass of water, she quickly put her pants on and went back to sleep,” her mother said.
The next morning, the man said nothing about the incident. “To put it bluntly, he didn’t consider that she might wake up,” the father said. And he hoped that she would not remember the next morning.
“And she herself was so sharp and brave to tell us everything right away,” her mother said. “We’d been having sleepovers for years, but until then, no one had reason to suspect anything. Our daughter also hadn’t consciously experienced any previous abuse, because he had drugged her. He mixed a high dose of sleeping pills into a glass of chocolate milk.”
At the police’s request, the parents secured the girl’s clothes and stuffed animals. The police also asked them to remain quiet about what happened in the interest of the investigation. They did so until they heard another child was invited to a sleepover with Van B.’s child. “I completely broke down. I started warning other parents.”
The couple found out the details of their daughter’s abuse in the police report. “The police found many photos and videos he had taken. The abuse of our daughter was extensively documented in the footage,” the father said.
“We still experience the consequences every day. To this day, I can’t function as I used to,” the mother said. Her daughter also struggles. “She’s more cautious in her interactions. She knows she was drugged and that images were found, but she doesn’t know any details that we as adults can’t grasp. She does know she acted correctly. We told her: Thanks to you, this all stopped.”
The 10-year-old girl’s parents filed a police report on 25 August 2024. Two weeks later, the suspect turned himself in and confessed to sexually abusing several children. He apologized during a pre-trial hearing, but that meant little to the families involved. The girl’s mother will use her chance to speak at the trial. So that she can make clear the consequences this man has inflicted on so many families.
According to Bart Visser of the victim support group Namens de Familie, some of the victims suffered horrific abuse. “Without going into details, I can say that the suspect’s actions are not carried out by normal people. And certainly not with children.”
Unsuspecting parents whose children stayed with the suspect’s children received messages from the police out of the blue. The fact that the victims are friends with the perpetrator’s children makes it even more painful, Visser told Nieuwsuur. “They trusted someone who turned out not to be trustworthy. Their trust in people has taken a huge hit.”
According to the OM, the sexual abuse started in 2011. Most of the cases date from 2022 and 2024. Experts from the Pieter Baan Center determined that Van B. has multiple sexual disorders. They recommend that he be placed under compulsory psychiatric treatment.
