Man sentenced to 18 years for sexual abuse of daughter & her friends during sleepovers
The court in Rotterdam sentenced 46-year-old Mels van B. from Barendrecht to 18 years in prison with mandatory psychiatric treatment for child sexual assault, rape, assault, and the production and possession of child sexual abuse footage. The court convicted Van B. of 37 crimes, including the physical sexual abuse of 18 girls - his daughter, his niece, and 16 of his daughter's friends during sleepovers at his home or campsite.
The prison time is several years longer than what the Public Prosecution Service (OM) had sought in the disturbing case. Prosecutors had asked the judges to convict Van B. and sentence him to 14 years in prison, with an additional period of mandatory psychiatric institutionalization. According to Telegraaf reporter Saskia Belleman, posting live from the courtroom, the court’s ruling was met with disbelief and cheers from the gallery where the victims’ families watched.
Prosecutors alleged that Van B.’s systemic abuse of children started in 2011 and continued for roughly 13 years, until Van B. was taken into custody. The volume of crimes committed intensified, particularly between 2022 and 2024, after Van B.’s divorce. The abuse of his daughter and her friends often took place in his home or at a campsite in Hoeven that they frequented. Van B. recorded many of the incidents, each lasting from about 20 minutes to an hour.
“Over the years, the suspect developed a method in which he administered a strong sedative to the children just before bedtime in secret, such as by stirring it into a cup of hot chocolate. This put the children into such a deep sleep that they did not wake up when the suspect performed extreme sexual acts on them,” the OM stated in its summary of the case.
“The case came to light in the summer of 2024, when a girl woke up in the middle of the night to find her underwear pulled down and the suspect sitting next to her bed. She had already spent three nights at her friend’s house, and on the fourth night, she decided not to have chocolate milk before bed,” the prosecution said. Although the girl was not sedated, the suspect again assaulted her.
“The next day, the victim panicked and told her parents, who picked her up and then went to the police.” Over time, the suspect surrendered to investigators and named the 31 victims, which was backed up by evidence collected on data storage devices, and also forensic tests of hair samples provided by the victims.
The court called the case “exceptional” for many reasons, including the scale, length, and seriousness of the abuse. Van B.’s actions were “sophisticated and planned,” the court said. During the day, he exhausted the children with a busy schedule to ensure they would fall asleep easily. Then he drugged them so they would not wake.
Van B. seriously violated the children’s normal sexual development, the court said. Not all the girls remember the abuse, leaving their parents with the impossible choice of telling them or not.
The man’s statements made it sound like the abuse happened to him as well, but according ot the court, there is no evidence that Van B. ever tried to resist his pedosexual feelings. He saw a psychiatrist for a while, but kept these feelings a secret. According to the court, he time and again chose his own wants and interests above those of the victims, including his own child.
Van B. has two weeks to appeal against the ruling.
