Youth care org. still refuses to be open about years of foster child abuse: researchers

The sexual and physical abuse of foster children at the De Glind youth village in Gelderland was able to continue for years due to a closed culture and a lack of external supervision, researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam concluded after investigating the abuses. The youth care organization Pluryn is still refusing to fully disclose what happened, the researchers said, Omroep Gelderland reports.

De Glind is a village near Barnevel,d where children who have been placed out of their parents' or guardians’ homes are cared for in family homes. The largely Protestant village has room to care for 120 foster children, under the supervision of the youth care organization Pluryn.

In October 2022, Omroep Gelderland revealed that dozens of foster children had been physically, mentally, and sexually abused at De Glind. The broadcaster later also received reports from after 2000. Erasmus University and the support group BE4You2 then launched an investigation into the abuses, speaking to former residents and examining over 2000 claims submitted by victims to the Violent Crimes Compensation Fund.

“The results show that various forms of abuse occurred, including emotional, physical, and sexual violence,” the researchers state. Victims continue to suffer the consequences of abuse and maltreatment “to this day,” the researchers said. Those who dared to make complaints were not believed or taken seriously, and management kept reports internal rather than going to the police.

The researchers explicitly criticized Pluryn for refusing to be transparent about this abuse. According to the researchers, Pluryn repeatedly invoked privacy legislation and only allowed an independent lawyer to examine a portion of the youth care organization’s paper archive. During that internal archive investigation, Pluryn discovered signs of abuse in board minutes from the 1990s. Instead of pursuing this, the youth care organization halted the investigation into the archives from 2000 onward. Pluryn also refused to make the research public, citing privacy reasons.

Pluryn never actively contacted victims. They had to make considerable efforts to obtain information about their history. And if they did manage to get hold of documents, many passages were blacked out.

“Pluryn thus gives the impression of wanting to (literally) conceal abuses, both in the past and present,” the researchers wrote. Youth care organizations need an open, learning attitude to facilitate change, they wrote. The researchers “didn’t sufficiently experience this attitude at Pluryn,” they wrote.

“Several reasons seemed to play a role in this, including protecting the organization’s interests and reputation, and privacy legislation as an excuse for not being transparent.”