Several women accuse Amsterdam alderman of inappropriate conduct

Not only women from the official organization in Amsterdam but also outside said they experienced all kinds of inappropriate conduct from Alderman for building and housing Laurens Ivens, Het Parool reported. The Amsterdam Alderman resigned in July due to offensive comments he made towards female colleagues.

He personally approached the only woman in a group of ten students who had a complaint about the safety of their residential complex. In an email he wrote to her: “I will gladly take a walk with you around the neighborhood.”

One woman who had been a speaker in a council meeting said that Ivens invited “just the two of them” on Facebook to lunch in his office. He sat “just too close” to her and began asking her questions about her personal life. She left within 20 minutes.

Between 2015 and 2020, Ivens “frequently sought personal conversations with women who turned to the municipality”.

“As a young woman, you felt what it was about,” a female officer said about Ivens’ behavior. “He asked a few times if I would go for a beer in the evening, it was behavior focused on intimacy.” On a different, occasion when she held a presentation for the police Ivens asked “if I thought men in uniforms were sexy. I got angry and told him I was not okay with this.”

An external investigation was launched last week into the conduct of Ivens. The investigation showed that women who complained about him were kept away from him as a solution. The reports of the undesirable behavior continued for a long time. The alderman resigned in July of this after four official reports were made at the beginning of this year.

Het Parool wrote that there will be a new protocol. It will include, among other points, that the mayor and municipal secretary will be immediately informed in the event of complaints about undesirable behavior by an official.