Four adults who were taken into care and placed with families in a special village in the 1980s and 1990s say they were physically and sexually abused during their time there, the Telegraaf reported on Wedesday.

The four have all made formal police complaints about their mistreatment, said to be at the hands of one man who worked in the De Glind village near Barneveld, in the heart of the Dutch Bible belt. 

The ‘youth village’ has places for 120 children and has been used to try to give children from troubled families and orphans a normal childhood for over 100 years. It first hit the headlines in an abuse scandal in October 2022.

Lawyer Jordi L’Homme said that his clients – three women and one man –  had submitted the complaints on Tuesday and that the abuse happened while they were 5, 6, 7 and 10 years old. The last of the four left the village in 1992.

The complaints centre on a 67-year-old man who was “aggressive” and who “used to come in their beds at night” and sexually abuse them, the Telegraaf said.  All four are ready to take the next steps, L’Homme told the paper.

The man at the centre of the allegations, given the initials C W by the paper, still works as a therapist, the Telegraaf said.

In October 2022, Omroep Gelderland reported that dozens of children who were taken into care and placed with families in the village in the 1980s and 1990s say they were physically and sexually abused during their time there.

The broadcaster spoke to 40 former foster children who spent time in the village and 29 of them said they had faced physical and mental abuse. Six also reported being sexually abused by their carers. The most recent complaint dates from 2019.

Three former residents also alerted social work group Pluryn to the problems in 2019 but, despite pledging to ‘dig into the claims’ the agency failed to set up an independent body to carry out the research, Omroep Gelderland said at the time.

It finally did so in March 2023, and called for witnesses to come forward.

More cases

Pluryn has said it will comment later about the new allegations.

The De Glind is not the first institution where claims about the abuse of children who were in residential care have been made.

At least 800 Catholic priests and monks were involved in abusing children in their care between 1945 and 1985, according to a comprehensive report into the church sexual abuse scandal published in December 2011.